Peter Turner

The bust of Peter Turner at St Olave Hart Street Church in London. The bust went missing in 1941 after the church was gutted by bombing, but was recovered at an art auction in 2011 and returned to the church Peter Turner M.D. (1542–1614) was an English physician, known as a follower of Paracelsus. He also was a Member of Parliament, during the 1580s.

Early life He was the son of William Turner the churchman, Marian exile and botanist, and his wife Jane Auder. He was instructed by his father in both a religious and a scientific outlook. After his father's death his mother remarried Richard Cox, Bishop of Ely. He graduated M.A. at St John's College, Cambridge. He then proceeded M.D. at Heidelberg in 1571, where his medical contacts included Thomas Erastus and Sigismund Melanchthon. He was incorporated M.D. at Cambridge in 1575, and on 10 July 1599 at Oxford.

Professional associations Turner practised his profession in London, where, on 4 December 1582, he was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians. He was promised on 4 May 1580 the reversion to the office of physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital. There he succeeded Roderigo Lopez, and was in 1584 succeeded by Timothy Bright. Muffet was the effective leader of the group of physicians including Bright and Penny as well as Turner: they were humanist followers of Paracelsus, at arm's length from the London College of Physicians. When the German Valentine Russwurin, a Paracelsian with a worked-out system of treatment, was active in London, Turner accompanied him to observe his methods. Christopher Hatton spoke against it.

Later life In 1606 Turner attended Sir Walter Ralegh in the Tower of London. He died in London on 27 May 1614. He was buried near his father in the church of St. Olave's, Hart Street, London, in a coloured tomb of the Jacobean style, on which his effigy knelt in a scarlet gown.

A Spirituall Song of Praise appended to Oliver Pygge's Meditations concerning Prayer to Almighty God for the Safety of England when the Spaniards were come into the Narrow Seas, 1588, 1589, has also been attributed to Turner.

Family Turner married Pascha, daughter of Henry Parry, chancellor of Salisbury Cathedral, and sister of Henry Parry, the bishop of Worcester. The physician Samuel Turner and the mathematician Peter Turner were his sons.