Patrick Browne (ca. 1720-1790), Irish physician, historian and Caribbean botanist: a brief biography with an account of his lost medical dissertations.

Abstract

Patrick Browne (ca. 1720-1790), a native of County Mayo, Ireland, studied medicine in Paris, graduated from the University of Rheims in 1742, and briefly continued his studies at Leiden before practising as a doctor at St Thomas's Hospital, London. Subsequently, he lived for many years in the Caribbean, in Antigua, Jamaica, Saint Croix and Montserrat, but retired to County Mayo in 1771. Browne published The civil and natural history of Jamaica in 1756 a most significant work in terms of botanical nomenclature, which included new names for 104 genera, and he promised also a volume of medical essays, but this was never printed. Fragments of his essays on venereal disease and yaws have been traced among his correspondence with Carl Linnaeus.