Peter Turner (physician)

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.

He was the son of William Turner the churchman, Marian exile and botanist. He was instructed by his father in both a religious and a scientific outlook. 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.

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.

Turner knew Thomas Penny at Heidelberg; and accompanied him on trips as a naturalist. Thomas Muffet, another associate, later mentioned Turner's work on Penny's entomological notes. Turner is one of the "Lime Street naturalists" for Harkness, who also notes his reputation for chemical treatments that killed his patients. Among those he treated were Roger North, 2nd Baron North and Henry Brooke, 11th Baron Cobham.

Muffet's correspondence with Petrus Severinus indicates that Turner was part of the same network. 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 arms 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.

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