Томас Мафет: Англиялық табиғат зерттеушісі және дәрігер

English naturalist and physician (1553–1604)

Thomas Muffet (also Moufet, Mouffet, or Moffet) (1553 – 5 June 1604) was an English naturalist and physician. He is best known his study of insects and arthropods in regard to medicine (particularly spiders), his support of the Paracelsian system of medicine, and his emphasis on the importance of experience over reputation in the field of medicine. He was an Anti papist due to his Puritan beliefs.

Thomas Muffet was born in 1553 as the second son to haberdasher Thomas Moffet, Afterward, Muffet studied medicine with Thomas Lorkin and John Caius. Three years later, he began his master's degree at Trinity, for which he was expelled from Gonville by the master Thomas Legge. In Spring 1578 Muffet boarded with Felix Platter, chief physician of Basel, where he adopted the Paracelsian system of medicine. In 1579, Muffet was awarded a doctorate in medicine from Basel University. His thesis was entitled De amodinis medicamentis (1578).

The year after receiving his MD, in 1580, Thomas Muffet studied silkworm anatomy in Italy before finally returning to England. That December, Muffet married his first wife, Jane, in St Mary Colechurch, London. Two years later, he was recognized as a qualified physician by the College of Physicians in London. This was not expected, as Muffet was a strong advocate for the Paracelsian system of medicine, which was not widely respected by the medical community. The same year, Muffet was sent by Sir Francis Walsingham on a diplomatic mission to Denmark to present the Order of the Garter to King Frederick. It was here he met both Tycho Brahe and Petrus Severinus, though there is no evidence as to either's intellectual influence upon him. Later in 1588, Muffet published his Nosomantica Hippocratea, advocating support for the work and writings of Hippocrates. Nine years later, in October 1597, Muffet was elected as a member of parliament for Wilton. Thomas Muffet died at the Bulbridge Farm, in Wilton, Wiltshire on 5 June 1604.

Thomas Muffet first studied silkworms while working in Italy, beginning his continued fascination with arthropods in general, particularly spiders. The prime reason the book was published posthumously was that the English market for books on natural science was weak at the time. The original illustrations were given up as too expensive and replaced with woodcuts.

Muffet's work in nutrition was collected in his book Health's Improvement which was designed more for the layman than for contemporary medical professionals. It contains the first list of British wildfowl, recognizing for the first time the migratory habits of many of them. This book was published even later than Theatrum Insectorum, not until 1655, in an edition edited by Christopher Bennet.

It has been suggested that Muffet's stepchild, his only daughter, Patience, is the subject of the nursery rhyme 'Little Miss Muffet'. Although the name and subject fit the verse, there is no clear evidence of a connection and the verse was only printed in 1805.