Oswald Cockayne

Thomas Oswald Cockayne (1807–1873) was a churchman and philologist, best known today for his monumental edition of Old English medical texts.^[1]

Life

Cockayne took a degree at St. John's College, Cambridge, graduating in mathematics in 1828 as tenth wrangler. He later took holy orders, alongside working for many years an assistant-master in King's College School, London (until 1869). He was a member of the Philological and the Early English Text Societies.^[2][3]

Works

Cockayne's principal works were:

• A Civil History of the Jews, from Joshua to Hadrian (1841)
• A Greek Syntax (1846)
• Outlines of the History of France (1846)
• Outlines of the History of Ireland (1851)
• Life of Marshal Turenne (1853)
• Leechdoms Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England Being a Collection of Documents, for the Most Part Never Before Printed Illustrating the History of Science in this Country Before the Norman Conquest, Rerum Britannicarum Medii Ævi Scriptores (Rolls Series), 35, 3 vols (London: Longman and others, 1864–6): vol. I, vol. II, vol. III.
• Spoon and Sparrow, or English roots in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew (London: Parker, son, and Bourn, 1861)
• The Shrine, a collection of papers on dry subjects (1864)

References

1. Anne Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies: The Old English Herbarium and Anglo-Saxon Medicine (New York: Routledge 2002), pp. 1-34.
2. Brodribb, Arthur Aikin (1887). "Cockayne, Thomas Oswald" . In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 11. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 176.
3. "Cockayne, Thomas Oswald (CKN824TO)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.

External links

• Kenneally, Daniel F. "Cockayne, Thomas Oswald". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/5762. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)