{{short description|British physician, poet and humanist}} {{Use dmy dates|date=September 2016}} {{Use British English|date=September 2016}} '''Raphael Thorius''' M.D. (died 1625) was a London physician of Huguenot and Flemish background, known as a poet and humanist.
==Life== Thorius was the son of Franciscus Thorius (François De Thoor), M.D., a Paris physician who was Flemish: a Protestant convert, Latin poet and translator of Ronsard. He was born in Belle, Flanders, where his father had moved by 1570.<ref name="DNB">{{cite DNB|wstitle=Thorius, Raphael|volume=56}}</ref><ref name="ODNB">{{cite ODNB|id=27336|title=Thorius, Raphael|first=Ole Peter|last=Grell}}</ref><ref name="Ford2013">{{cite book|author=Philip Ford|title=The Judgment of Palaemon: The Contest Between Neo-Latin and Vernacular Poetry in Renaissance France|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_kiLqK8YML8C&pg=PA169|year=2013|publisher=BRILL|isbn=978-90-04-24539-6|pages=169–70}}</ref> His birthplace, now in France, was then part of the Southern Netherlands.
He studied medicine at Oxford, then graduated M.D. at the University of Leyden. He then began unlicensed practice in London, and was fined by the College of Physicians. Later he presented himself to the College for examination, and was admitted a licentiate on 23 December 1596. He resided in the parish of St. Benet Finck in London, and built up a good practice.<ref name="DNB"/>
Thorius was one of the Dutch Reformed humanists of London, in the circle around Simon Ruytinck of the London Dutch church. There he knew Baldwin Hamey the elder, amongst others.<ref>{{cite ODNB|id=2039|title=Hamey, Baldwin, the elder|first=Ole Peter|last=Grell}}</ref> He died of the plague in his own house in London in the summer of 1625. Lobelius the botanist, Nathaniel Baxter, Sir Robert Ayton, Meric Casaubon, Theodore Mayerne and William Halliday were among his other friends.<ref name="DNB"/> He appears as the hard-drinking "Dr. Torie" in Pierre Gassendi's ''Life'' of Nicolas de Peiresc.<ref>{{cite book|author=Pierre Gassendi|title=The Mirrour of True Nobility & Gentility Being the Life of Peiresc|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JOhdg4rjqegC&pg=PA75|year=2003|publisher=Infinity Publishing|isbn=978-0-7414-1752-7|page=75}}</ref>
==Works== Thorius wrote a Latin ode in 1603, exhorting his wife and family to leave London on account of the plague. In 1610 he wrote ''Hymnus Tabaci'', a poem of two books in hexameters. The influence of the ''Syphilis'' of Hieronymus Fracastorius has been suggested, a parallel being the way he addresses Sir William Paddy, as Fracastorius addresses Peter Bembo. Thorius revised the poem, and it was published in 1625 at Leyden (first London edition 1627, pocket edition wat Utrecht in 1644). In February 1625 Thorius completed a poem of 142 hexameter lines entitled ''Hyems'', dedicated to Constantijn Huygens, which is sometimes printed with the ''Hymnus''.<ref name="DNB"/>
A manuscript volume of his poems (Sloane MS. 1768) contains Greek verses, and numerous Latin poems. Topics include: the execution of Sir Walter Ralegh; an epitaph for William Camden; an epistle to Baudius; and verses on the naturalists Rondeletius and Lobelius.<ref name="DNB"/> The manuscript includes also the verse Thorius wrote with Jacob Cool, on behalf of the London Dutch community, for the 1604 coronation entry of James I of England.<ref name="ODNB"/>
==Family== Thorius had a son John, besides other children who died young.<ref name="DNB"/>
==Notes== {{reflist}}
==External links== *{{in lang|fr}} [http://home.nordnet.fr/~rgombert/Meteren/FicheN16.htm ''Fiche d’Histoire N°16 Série «Troubles religieux» Les Huguenots émigrés du XVIe siècle''.] This site regards John Thorius the writer as probably first cousin of Raphael Thorius.
;Attribution {{DNB|wstitle=Thorius, Raphael|volume=56}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Thorius, Raphael}} Category:Year of birth missing Category:1625 deaths Category:Flemish medical doctors Category:17th-century English medical doctors Category:Neo-Latin poets Category:Flemish Renaissance humanists Category:People from the Spanish Netherlands Category:Immigrants to the Kingdom of England