Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/310

 tains 314 leaves of paper; a few are lacking at the beginning, at the end, and in other places. It includes seventy-seven articles; the more important are: (1) ‘The Life of Alexander the Great;’ (4) ‘Morte Arthure;’ (6) ‘Syr Ysambrace;’ (9) ‘Syr Degrevante;’ (10) ‘Syr Eglamoure;’ (13) ‘Thomas of Ersseldoune;’ (14) ‘The Awnetyrs of Arthure at the Terne-Wathelyne;’ (15) ‘Syr Perceyvelle of Galles;’ (30) a tract by William Nassyngton [q. v.]; (34–42) ‘The Moralia,’ and other works, by Richard Rolle [q. v.] of Hampole; (54) a sermon of John Gaytrygge; (77) a collection of medical receipts. Of these the poems of Thomas of Erceldoune were printed by Laing in his ‘Early Popular Poetry of Scotland,’ 1822; ‘The Awnetyrs of Arthure’ by Sir Frederic Madden in his ‘Sir Gawayne,’ Bannatyne Club, 1839; ‘Sir Perceval of Galles’ and ‘Sir Isambras’ by Halliwell in his ‘Thornton Romances,’ Camden Society, 1844 (‘Sir Eglamour’ and ‘Sir Degrevant’ were also printed in the same volume, but not from Thornton's manuscript); the ‘Morte Arthure’ was printed in a limited edition by Halliwell in 1847, and was edited by Canon Perry for the Early English Text Society in 1865 (new ed. 1871); Rolle's English prose treatises were edited for the same society in 1866, and Nassyngton's tract and other religious pieces in 1867 (new ed. 1889); two charms in verse were printed in the ‘Reliquiæ Antiquæ,’ i. 126–7.

Thornton's other volume (Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 31042), also dating from the fifteenth century, contains 183 leaves and twenty-six articles. The chief of them are: (1) a fragment of the ‘Cursor Mundi,’ edited for the Early English Text Society by R. Morris, 1874–8; (5) ‘The Sege of Melayne,’ apparently a unique poem, forming an introduction to ‘Roland and Otuel,’ with which it was edited by S. J. Herrtage for the Early English Text Society in 1880; (9) Lydgate's ‘Memorial Verses on the Kings of England;’ (20–1) Songs: (a) ‘How that Mercy passeth Rightwisnes,’ (b) ‘How Mercy commes before Jugement,’ printed by F. J. Furnivall in Early English Text Society, 1867.

[Authorities cited; prefaces to Sir F. Madden's Syr Gawayne, 1839, Halliwell's Thornton Romances, 1844, and Early English Text Society's publ. 1865, 1866, 1867; Ritson's Bibl. Anglo-Poetica; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Cat. Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. 1882, pp. 148–51; Ward's Cat. of Romances, i. 928–9, 953–5.]  THORNTON, ROBERT JOHN (1768?–1837), botanical and medical writer, younger son of Bonnell Thornton [q. v.] by Sylvia, daughter of John Brathwaite, was born probably in 1768, the year of his father's death. He was partly educated by the Rev. Mr. Taylor, vicar of Kensington, who took eight private pupils into his house. At sixteen he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, being intended for the church, but evinced a strong predilection for the medical profession, which his father, the son of an apothecary, had abandoned. He attended Professor Thomas Martyn's botanical lectures, and, when the death of his only brother put him in a position to fellow his inclination, he entered Guy's Hospital medical school, where during a three years' course he attended the lectures of Henry Cline [q. v.] on anatomy, and of William Babington (1756–1833) [q. v.] on chemistry. In 1793 he graduated M.B. at Cambridge, taking as the subject of his thesis a discovery of his own, ‘that the animal heat arises from the oxygen air imbibed by the blood flowing through the lungs, and taken from the atmosphere received by them, and that in its circulation through the body it decomposes.’ After his mother's death he visited Edinburgh, Dublin, Paris, Holland, and Germany to obtain further professional experience, and in 1797 began to practise in London. He had already begun the publication of his first work, ‘The Politician's Creed,’ issued under the pseudonym of ‘An Independent.’ Adopting from Thomas Beddoes (1760–1808) [q. v.] the Brunonian system, he began the administration of ‘factitious airs,’ and in 1796 published ‘The Philosophy of Medicine, being Medical Extracts … including … the Doctrine of Pneumatic Medicine.’ This work speedily went into five editions; and, though he offended the profession by his methods, Thornton seems to have acquired a considerable practice. For four years he acted as physician to the Marylebone dispensary, and is said to have introduced the use of digitalis in scarlet fever. Subsequently he succeeded Sir James Edward Smith [q. v.] as lecturer on medical botany at the united hospitals of Guy and St. Thomas.

Almost at the outset of his career Thornton ruined himself by the lavish scale on which he published his ‘New Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnæus.’ For this sumptuous work in imperial folio he engaged the services of Sir William Beechey, Opie, Raeburn, Russel, Reinagle, Harlow, Miss Burney, and others, as painters; Bartolozzi, Vendramini, Holl, Ward, and the Landseers as engravers; and Dr. George Shaw, George Dyer, Seward, and Maurice as poets. The work was advertised in 1797, and seems to have been issued in parts at twenty-five shillings each between 