Thomas Muffet

Thomas Muffet (1553 to 1604), also written Moufet, Mouffet or Moffet, was an English naturalist and physician best known for his study of insects and arthropods in relation to medicine, spiders above all. Born in Shoreditch, London, he attended Merchant Taylors' School, studied at Trinity College and Gonville Hall in Cambridge, and read medicine with Thomas Lorkin and John Caius. In 1578 he lodged with Felix Platter, chief physician of Basel, adopted the Paracelsian system of medicine, and the next year took his doctorate in medicine at Basel with a thesis on medicines. After studying silkworm anatomy in Italy he returned to England, was recognised as a physician in London, and in February 1588 became a fellow of the College of Physicians despite his Paracelsian views. He insisted that experience should count for more than reputation in medicine. A Puritan, he was opposed to the papacy. He was one of the authors of the Theatre of Insects, completed with the work of Thomas Penny, Edward Wotton and Conrad Gessner.