Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) studied the classics in his youth, then attended the medical schools at Montpellier and Padua, and obtained a medical degree at Leyden. In 1633 he settled in Norwich and became a family doctor. It has been said his fame as a writer overshadowed his work as a medical practitioner. He wrote his first and most celebrated book, Religio Medici in 1636, not for publication but for his own pleasure. When a pirated copy of his manuscript was published in 1642, it quickly became one of the most widely read books of his time, and has remained one of the most foremost classical writings of the English language.
As a young medical practitioner in Norwich he seems to have been averse to sexual intimacy, wishing (in Religio Medici) that we could procreate like trees, without conjunction, and “without this trivial and vulgar way of union” . . . “the foolishest act a wise man commits all his life.” Later he had second thoughts and fathered 12 children.
“I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition: it is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.”
https://hekint.org/2017/02/01/religio-medici-by-sir-thomas-browne/