Thomas Browne was born on 19 October 1605 in London, within the Kingdom of England. His early education took him to Winchester College, after which he continued his studies at Pembroke College, giving him a grounding in the English academic tradition before he pursued further training elsewhere.

Browne's education extended to the Continent, where he studied at the Faculty of Medicine in Montpellier and at Leiden University. He went on to work as a physician, writer, and philosopher, producing his writing in the English language throughout his career.

Among the works he produced, Religio Medici is the title recorded in the available evidence. Browne worked across the roles of physician, author, philosopher, and writer, and his output in English placed him within the literary and intellectual life of seventeenth-century England. His career brought together the practice of medicine with philosophical and literary writing, identities that the historical record consistently associates with him.

Thomas Browne died on 19 October 1682 in Norwich — the same calendar date as his birth, seventy-seven years earlier. That coincidence of birth and death falling on the nineteenth of October is among the more striking details the record preserves. He died a citizen of the Kingdom of England, having worked across his adult life as a physician, writer, philosopher, and author in the English language.