BROWN, John, the founder of the Brunonian Theory of Physic, was born in 1735 at Lintlaws or at Preston, Berwickshire. While very young he was apprenticed to a weaver; but having a strong aversion for the drudgery of such a mechanical employment, he was placed at the grammar-school of Dunse, where he soon distinguished himself.
His parents, who belonged to the religious body called Seceders, were flattered with their son's rapid and successful progress in the Latin language, and through the benevolent assistance of his teacher (Mr Cruickshank), young Brown was destined to the ministerial office. But an accident, it is said, made him at once renounce this plan and the sect. Having, while at the grammar-school, been prevailed on to attend a meeting of synod held in the Established church at Dunse, young Brown was called upon to appear before the session of his congregation, and required either to submit to ecclesiastical censure or to suffer expulsion. He spared them all trouble by renouncing their communion, and joining the Established church.
Brown then became a private tutor in a gentleman's family in the country; and at the same time acted as an assistant in the grammar-school of Dunse, where he remained till about his twentieth year. He then went to Edinburgh, and after passing through the preliminary classes, entered himself as a student of divinity in the university. He supported himself for some time by private teaching, and then resumed his former labours as assistant in the grammar-school of Dunse for a year; but returning to Edinburgh about 1759, he finally renounced the study of theology, and commenced that of physic.
During his medical studies, he supported himself by giving private instructions in Latin to students of medicine, preparatory to the examinations, which formerly were conducted in that language; as well as by translating their theses into Latin. Thus occupied, he soon attracted the notice of Dr Cullen. This eminent man not only employed Brown as a tutor in his own family, but was assiduous in recommending him to others; and he likewise gave him permission to deliver to private pupils illustrations of his own public lectures. Brown now married, and received students to board in his house; but either through recklessness or misconduct, his affairs were soon involved in total bankruptcy. Irritated by this misfortune, and still more, perhaps, by the disappointment he experienced in regard to a medical chair in the university, from which he imagined he was excluded by the interference of Dr Cullen, he quarrelled with his friend and patron, and became from that moment a keen opponent of his doctrines.
It was in 1780 that Brown's Elementa Medicinæ appeared. It is a compendium of his opinions, which he continued for several years to illustrate by public lectures. The excitement produced by the appearance of this work, both in this country and on the Continent, seems now almost incredible; but although it has passed through numerous editions, and its doctrine is detailed in all systematic works on medicine, the Brunonian theory is now maintained by few. Mr Brown now proposed to become a medical practitioner; but as he had quarrelled with all the professors at Edinburgh, he took the degree of M.D. at St Andrews.
The terms, however, on which he lived with his medical brethren, and his intemperate habits, precluded him from all rational hopes of success, and he therefore removed to London in 1786; but after he had delivered one course of lectures he was cut off by apoplexy in October 1788.