Life

He was of Welsh descent, son of Edward Gwinne, grocer, and was born in London. On 28 April 1570 he entered Merchant Taylors' School

Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood

Merchant Taylors' School is a British independent day school for boys, originally located in the City of London. Since 1933 it has been located at Sandy Lodge in the Three Rivers district of Hertfordshire ....

. He was elected to a scholarship at St. John's College, Oxford, in 1574, and afterwards became a fellow there. He proceeded B.A. 14 May 1578, and M.A. 4 May 1582. In 1582, as a regent master, he read lectures in music, but on 19 February 1583 he was allowed to discontinue the lecture. In 1588 he was junior proctor.

Queen Elizabeth visited Oxford in September 1592, and he took part as replier in moral philosophy in an academic disputation held for her amusement, defending the Moderns against the Ancients and being cut short by the proctors,; and at the same time was appointed to provide for plays in Christ Church

Christ Church, Oxford

Christ Church or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House), is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...

. He took the degree of M.B. 17 July 1593, and was the same day created M.D., on the recommendation of Lord Buckhurst

Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset

Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset was an English statesman, poet, dramatist and Freemason. He was the son of Richard Sackville, a cousin to Anne Boleyn. He was a Member of Parliament and Lord High Treasurer.-Biography:...

, chancellor of the university; one of his quaestiones on this occasion was 'whether the frequent use of tobacco was beneficial'.

In 1595 he went to France in attendance on Sir Henry Unton, the ambassador. When Gresham College

Gresham College

Gresham College is an institution of higher learning located at Barnard's Inn Hall off Holborn in central London, England. It was founded in 1597 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham and today it hosts over 140 free public lectures every year within the City of London.-History:Sir Thomas Gresham,...

 was founded in London, Gwinne was nominated by the university of Oxford on 14 February 1597 the first Gresham Professor of Physic

Gresham Professor of Physic

The Professor of Physic at Gresham College in London, England, gives free educational lectures to the general public. The college was founded for this purpose in 1596 / 7, when it appointed seven professors; this has since increased to eight and in addition the college now has visiting...

, and began to lecture in Michaelmas term 1598. He was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians

Royal College of Physicians

The Royal College of Physicians of London was founded in 1518 as the College of Physicians by royal charter of King Henry VIII in 1518 - the first medical institution in England to receive a royal charter...

 of London 30 September 1600, and a fellow 22 December 1605. He was six times censor, and twice held the office of registrar. In 1605 he was given the appointment of physician to the Tower. When in 1605 James I and Queen Anne of Denmark

Anne of Denmark

Anne of Denmark was queen consort of Scotland, England, and Ireland as the wife of King James VI and I.The second daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark, Anne married James in 1589 at the age of fourteen and bore him three children who survived infancy, including the future Charles I...

 visited Oxford, Gwinne disputed on physic with Sir William Paddy for the royal entertainment, on the questions whether the morals of nurses are imbibed by infants with their milk, and whether smoking tobacco

Tobacco

Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...

 is wholesome. The same evening at Magdalen College

Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...

 a play by Gwinne, entitled Vertumnus sive annus recurrens, was acted by students of his own college, St. John's, and pleased the king, although it did not keep him awake.

Gwinne resigned his Gresham professorship in 1607, and attained large professional practice. In 1620 Gwinne was appointed commissioner for inspecting tobacco. Gwinne lived in the parish of St. Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street, London, and there died in October 1627.

Works

The Gresham inaugural oration, with another, was published in 1605: Orationes duae, Londini habitae in sedibus Greshamiis in laudem Dei, Civitatis, Fundatoris, Electorum. Like all his Latin prose compositions these orations are crowded with quotations. Vertumnus sive annus recurrens was printed in London in 1607, with a preface praising the king, and with prefatory verses to Gwinne by Sir William Paddy and John Craig

John Craig (physician)

John Craig M.D. was a Scottish physician, known also as an astronomer. He was physician to James VI of Scotland, and accompanied him to England. He also corresponded with Tycho Brahe, and associated with John Napier.-Physician:...

, the royal physicians.

In 1611 was published his only medical work, against Francis Anthony

Francis Anthony

Francis Anthony was a noted English apothecary and physician, imprisoned twice for practicing without a license. He made a considerable fortune from a secret remedy he developed called aurum potabile.-Life:...

. Gwinne proves that Anthony's aurum potabile contained no gold, and that if it had, the virtues of gold as a medicine in no way corresponded to its value as a metal, and were few, if any. It is written in the form of a Latin dialogue between Anthony and his opponent; prefixed to were laudatory verses from the physicians Paddy, Craig, Forster, Fryer, and Hammond. Allen Debus considers that this work shows knowledge of the Paracelsian as well as the Galenist literature, and that the polemic, from the conservative angle, also shows some discrimination amongst different kinds of chemists in the medical field.

He was friendly with literary men, especially with John Florio, to whose works he contributed several commendatory sonnets under the pseudonym of 'Il Candido.' Gwinne also had significant connections to the circle of Sir Philip Sidney, and collaborated with Fulke Greville on the 1590 edition of the Arcadia

Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, also known simply as the Arcadia or the Old Arcadia, is a long prose work by Sir Philip Sidney written towards the end of the sixteenth century, and later published in several versions. It is Sidney's most ambitious literary work, by far, and as significant in...

. The links include sight of Sidney's now-lost translations from Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas was a French poet. A Huguenot, he served under Henry of Navarre. He is known as an epic poet. La Sepmaine; ou, Creation du monde was a hugely influential hexameral work, relating the creation of the world and the history of man...

. In the second dialogue of Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno , born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in proposing that the Sun was essentially a star, and moreover, that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited...

's La Cena de le Ceneri (1584) Gwinne and Florio are represented by Bruno as introducing him to Greville, at whose house the three dined before holding a philosophical disputation.

He wrote also:

• Epicedium in obitum &c. Henrici comitis Derbiensis, Oxford, 1593.
• Nero, London, 1603, and a second edition, 1639, a tragedy in Latin verse acted at St. John's College, Oxford (unconnected with the two English tragedies of Nero, published in 1607 and 1624 by unknown authors).
• Oratio in laudem Musices, first published in The Lives of the Professors of Gresham College (1740) by John Ward
  John Ward (academic)
  John Ward was an English teacher, supporter of learned societies, and biographer, remembered for his work on the Gresham College professors, of which he was one.-Life:...
  
  .

External links

• Page at the Royal College of Physicians