Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Terne, Christopher
TERNE, CHRISTOPHER, M.D. (1620–1673), physician, whose name is also spelt Tearne, was born in Cambridgeshire in 1620, entered the university of Leyden on 22 July 1647, and there graduated M.D. In May 1650 he was incorporated first at Cambridge and then at Oxford. He was examined as a candidate at the College of Physicians on 10 May 1650, and was elected a fellow on 15 Nov. 1655. He was elected assistant physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital on 13 May 1653 and held office till 1669 (Original Journal of St. Bartholomew's Hospital). He was appointed lecturer on anatomy to the Barber-Surgeons' Company in 1656, and in 1663 Pepys (Diary) heard him lecture. His ‘Prælectio Prima ad Chirurgos’ (No. 1917) and his other lectures (Nos. 1917–1921), written in a beautiful hand, are preserved in the Sloane collection in the British Museum. The lectures, which are dated 1656, begin with an account of the skin, going on to the deeper parts, and were delivered contemporaneously with the dissection of a body on the table. Several volumes of notes of his extensive medical reading are preserved (Nos. 1887, 1890, and 1897) in the same collection, and an important essay entitled ‘An respiratio inserviat nutritioni?’ He delivered the Harveian oration at the College of Physicians, in which, as in his lectures, he speaks with the utmost reverence of Harvey. The oration exists in manuscript (Sloane MS. 1903), and the only writings of Terne which have been printed are some Latin verses on Christopher Bennet [q. v.] which are placed below his portrait in the ‘Theatrum Tabidorum.’ He was one of the original fellows of the Royal Society. Terne died at his house in Lime Street, London, on 1 Dec. 1673, and was buried in St. Andrew's Undershaft.
His daughter Henrietta married Dr. Edward Browne [q. v.] His library was sold on 12 April 1686 with that of Dr. Thomas Allen.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. i. 272; Sloane MSS. in Brit. Mus.; original manuscript Annals of Coll. of Phys. vol. iv.; Library Catalogue, printed 1686; Thomson's Hist. of Royal Soc.; Wood's Fasti Oxon., ed. Bliss, ii. 162.]Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.263
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 77 | ii | 12 | Terne, Christopher: for spent read spelt |
| 28 | for (Nos. 1917 and 1921) read (Nos. 1917-1921) |