Thomas Cogan

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Thomas Cogan
Drawing of Cogan by Petrus Camper
Born	8 February 1736 Rothwell, Northamptonshire, England
Died	2 February 1818
Nationality	English
Occupation(s)	Physician Philosophical writer
Organization	Royal Humane Society

Thomas Cogan (8 February 1736 – 2 February 1818) was an English Nonconformist physician, a founder of the Royal Humane Society and philosophical writer.

Life

Thomas Cogan was born at

prevented him from joining the dissenting ministry.

In 1759 he was in the Netherlands, where he found that the Rev. Benjamin Sowden, the English minister of the presbyterian church at

on 16 October 1765, and took his degree of M.D. in 1767. He practised for a few years at Amsterdam, Leyden, and Rotterdam.

He returned to London and settled in

.

Royal Humane Society

A society for the preservation of life from accidents in water was instituted at Amsterdam in 1767, and became known to Cogan. On his return to England he found that Dr. William Hawes had a similar project, and the two doctors co-operated. Each of them brought 15 friends to a meeting at the Chapter Coffee-house in St. Paul's Churchyard in the summer of 1774, when the Royal Humane Society was formed. Cogan translated from the original Dutch in 1773 the Memoirs of the Society instituted at Amsterdam in favour of Drowned Persons, 1767–71, and prepared the first six annual reports of the English society. His interest in this charitable work lasted throughout his life. He started a branch at Bath in 1805, and left the mother-foundation in his will the sum of £100. One of the five gold medals minted for the society is inscribed to the memory of Cogan, and in its annual report for 1814 is a portrait of him, with a eulogy of his talents as an author and the co-founder.

Works

Cogan's thesis for his medical degree at Leyden was delivered there on 20 February 1767, and printed in the same year. It was entitled Specimen Medicum inaugurale de animi pathematum vi et modo agendi in inducendis et curandis morbis. His next publication was an anonymous account of John Buncle, junior, gentleman, 1776, which purported to be a memoir of the youngest son of

, On the Connexion between the Science of Anatomy and the Arts of Drawing, Painting, Statuary.

He also wrote elaborate treatises on the passions. The first of them bore the name of A Philosophical Treatise on the Passions, 1800, 2nd edit. 1802. Then succeeded an Ethical Treatise on the Passions, in two parts, the first of which appeared in 1807 and the second in 1810. Two volumes of Theological Disquisitions on Religion as affecting the Passions and on the Characteristic Excellencies of Christianity followed in 1812 and 1813 respectively, and the whole five treatises were published in a set in 1813. Last of all came in 1817 a bundle of Ethical Questions, or Speculations on the principal subjects of Controversy in Moral Philosophy. His plan was "to trace the moral history of man in his pursuits, power, and motives of action." A long analysis of Cogan's writings is in Jared Sparks's Collection of Essays and Tracts in Theology (1824), which also contains (pp. 237–362) a reprint of his Letters to William Wilberforce on the doctrine of Hereditary Depravity, by a Layman (pseud. i.e. T. Cogan), in which he denounced the view supported by William Wilberforce in his Practical View of the prevailing Religious Systems of Professed Christians, and argued for the happiness of all mankind. These letters originally appeared in 1799, and were printed in cheap editions for Unitarian book societies. A fragment of his Disquisition on the Characteristic Excellencies of Christianity was appended in 1822 to a discourse by Lant Carpenter. NOTE* The above statement about the 2 volumes of "The Rhine a Journey from Utrecht to Francfort", etc. 1793. I believe was not published at stated above in 1793 as the advertisement leaf in the 1794 1st edition dated january 1794 states clearly his reason for NOT publishing it anonymously as it might be taken for a work by a "fabulist" or tale teller and NOT a true travelogue. I doubt very much the statement above to be correct all 6 copies held in The British Library are dated 1794, bar two electronic/virtual copies which are taken from the one source.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Cogan, Thomas (1736-1818)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

External links

Media related to Thomas Cogan at Wikimedia Commons