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Feature of the month - November 2008

Robert John Thornton

In 1786 the physician and botanist Robert John Thornton (1768 – 1837) entered Trinity College, Cambridge to study theology but was soon drawn to medicine. He attended the lectures given at Guy’s Hospital by Henry Cline and William Babbington and graduated MB at Cambridge in 1793.

Following travels in Scotland, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, and Germany, Thornton commenced his physician’s practice in London in 1797. In 1805 he became an MD of the University of St Andrews, and in 1812 became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians. In 1796, however, he was appointed lecturer in medical botany at Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals and devoted the greater part of his energies to the literary work for which he is best known: the New illustration of the sexual system of Linnćus, comprehending an elucidation of the several parts of fructification, perhaps better known under its 1804 title of The Temple of Flora (cover shown below). This work began to appear in parts in 1799; each instalment was priced at one guinea.

The Royal Society of Medicine’s copy of The Temple of Flora is currently on display in the Society’s Library on the first-floor of the building.

A team of master engravers, colourists, painters, and illustrators including Francesco Bartolozzi, Sir William Beechey, Richard Earlom, Peter Henderson, John Landseer, James Opie, Abraham Pether, Henry Raeburn, Philip Reinagle, and John Russell all contributed to the work using the full range of modern illustrative and printing techniques.

This lavishly illustrated series ran up huge production costs and Thornton soon found himself in severe financial straits. Placing his faith in the power of advertising, Thornton exhibited the plates at 49 New Bond Street, and an Act of Parliament in 1811 allowed him to raise funds by setting up a Royal Botanical Lottery selling 20,000 tickets at two guineas each, the first prize being a set of original botanical paintings.

The illustrations in The Temple of Flora have been described as “the most overtly dramatic in the history of botany.” The Night-Blowing Cereus, shown here, was painted by Philip Reinagle and Abraham Pether, and engraved by Robert Dunkarton in 1800. The plant is depicted against an unsettling moonlit landscape of ruins and anticipates the atmosphere of much European Romantic literature and painting.

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