From the internet: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/flude/Bio_Rob_fludd.htm
Robert Fludd was born and bred an Elizabethan. His father was Sir Thomas Fludd, the younger son of a Shropshire family who rose from the humble post of victualler for the Berwick-on-Tweed garrison to that of Treasurer for Her Majesty’s forces in the Netherlands. For his services he received a knighthood, and retired to his home in Milgate House, Bearsted, Kent which though largely rebuilt in the eighteenth century still retains part of the sixteenth-century building. In Bearsted Parish Church register, the marriages of Sir Thomas’s other children to knights and gentlefolk are recorded. Sir Thomas was buried there in 1607, a Justice of the Peace, respected and esteemed by all.
Our knowledge of Robert is a blank from his birth in 1574 until 1592, when he entered St John’s College, Oxford. By the time he graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1596, he was sufficiently versed in music to compose his treatise on the subject, and had become expert in mundane and hourly astrology. Priding himself on having always remained an ‘unstained virgin’ he had little sympathy for the frailties of the flesh, and sexual desire figured in his philosophy as the very cause of man’s Fall.
He remained at Oxford until he attained his Master of Arts degree in 1598, then left England for the Continent where he travelled for nearly six years in France, Spain, Italy and Germany, working as a tutor in aristocratic families. He names some of his pupils as Charles de Lorraine, fourth Duc de Guise, and his brother François; the Marquis de Orizon, Vicomte de Cadenet, and one Reinaud of Avignon. It is reported that he was sorry to have to leave Avignon for Marseilles, where he was to tutor the Guises, but he must then have returned to Italy, for in 1602 he met William Harvey in Padua.
It seems fair to assume that his vocation as a physician formed itself during these years of roaming, and that his leanings towards the occult, already evident in his hobby of astrology, led him into medical circles on the Continent. His inclination was towards holistic healing that treated the patient first and the disease second; thus he considered not just the physical body but the subtler senses as well, and said that a doctor ignorant of astrology is nothing better than a quack.
On his return to England, he entered Christ Church, Oxford, and by May 1605 passed his Bachelor and Doctorate of Medicine. He failed his first examination for the College of Physicians and was not allowed to practice. In February 1606 he was examined a second time, and according to the College’s records, ‘Although he did not give full satisfaction in the examinations, he was thought not unlearned and therefore allowed to practice medicine'. By May, he had once again fallen foul of the college so that his name was again removed from the roll and he was told to behave himself better. So in 1607 he had to apply again, was thrice examined, and re-admitted as a candidate in December. In March 1608, he again ‘conducted himself so insolently as to offend everyone’, and was once more rejected. Not until September 1609 was he finally admitted a Fellow in good standing. However, once his initial sparring with the College of Physicians was over, his standing improved to the point of his serving frequently as their Censor (examiner).
He set up his medical practice in London, first in Fenchurch Street and later in Coleman Street. He was successful enough to employ his own apothecary, doubtless a necessity for a physician whose herbal and chemical remedies were not compounded by every pharmacist. He used several techniques of diagnosis, including the time-honoured methods of feeling the patients’ pulses and examining their urine, to both of which he gave a thorough if idiosyncratic philosophical grounding. He diagnosed, too, through his patients’ horoscopes and calculated their critical days from planetary transits.
The first of his two great literary works entitled "History of the Macrocosm" caused something of a stir on its appearance in 1617. He was summoned by King James 1 to reply to his critics and afterwards he said that he "received from that time forward many gracious favours of him [the King], and found him my just and kingly patron all the days of his life" (James 1 died 1625). His second major work was the "Medicina Catholica" a universal medical text book in two volumes, published in 1629 and 1631 respectively. He wrote only one other work from then onwards, "Philosophia Moysaica", a summation of his philosophy, which appeared posthumously in 1638.
He died at his home in Coleman Street, London on 8 September 1637, aged sixty-three, and was buried in Bearsted Church. The handsome monument above designed by him and erected by his nephew Thomas Fludd or Flood of Gore Court, Otham, Kent may still be seen there, although it was moved from the chancel to the vestry by a disapproving vicar towards the end of the nineteenth century. The name of Robert Fludd soon passed as a mere catchword for arcane and incomprehensible philosophy, but he truly was one of the last of his kind, a true "Renaissance man" of the 17th century.
