THREE CENTURIES' PERSPECTIVESsophical, and part whimsical Religio Medici, or "Religion of a Doc-
tor." The Pseudodoxia Epidemica (his Latinized title for a plethora
of false truths) is the granddaddy of a most honorable genre still
vigorously pursued—exposes of common errors and popular igno-
rance, particularly the false beliefs most likely to cause social harm.
I cited Browne's statement from the one chapter (among more
than a hundred) sure to send shudders down the spine of modern
readers—his debunking of the common belief "that Jews stink."
Browne, although almost maximally philo-Semitic by the standards
of his century, was not free of all prejudicial feelings against Jews.
He attributed the origin of the canard about Jewish malodor—
hence, my earlier quotation—to a falsely literal reading of a meta-
phor legitimately applied (or so he thought) to the descendants of
people who had advocated the crucifixion of Jesus. Browne wrote:
"Now the ground that begat or propagated this assertion, might be
the distasteful averseness of the Christian from the Jew, upon the
villainy of that fact, which made them abominable and stink in the
nostrils of all men." (Modern apostles of political correctness should
ponder the noninclusiveness of Browne's "all men" in this context.)
As a rationale for debunking a compendium of common errors,
Browne correctly notes that false beliefs arise from incorrect theo-
ries about nature and therefore serve as active impediments to
knowledge, not just as laughable signs of primitivity: "To purchase
a clear and warrantable body of truth, we must forget and part with
much we know." Moreover, Browne notes, truth is hard to ascertain
and ignorance is far more common than accuracy. Writing in the
mid-seventeenth century, Browne uses "America" as a metaphor
for domains of uncharted ignorance, and he bewails our failure to
use good tools of reason as guides through this terra incognita: "We
find no open tract... in this labyrinth; but are oft-times fain to
wander in the America and untravelled parts of truth."
The Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Browne's peregrination through the
maze of human ignorance, contains 113 chapters gathered into
seven books on such general topics as mineral and vegetable bodies,
animals, humans, Bible tales, and geographical and historical myths.
Browne debunks quite an array of common opinions, including
claims that elephants have no joints, that the legs of badgers are
shorter on one side than the other, and that ostriches can digest iron.
As an example of his style of argument, consider Book 3, Chap-