H. Bertram Lewis was born in London in 1882. After two years at Oxford, where he was trained as an engineer, he took up the study of medicine, and was certified as a medical practitioner in 1903. From 1907 he practised as a doctor at the Charing Cross Hospital, London, and during the next twenty years wrote numerous medical papers and reviews
In 1917 Lewis went to China as a health officer with the British government. While there, he began work on his major work, The Principles of Human Knowledge (1921), which has since been translated into five languages. Russell Pringle described it as "the most comprehensive, orderly account of man's knowledge of himself that has ever been written...." After two further books- Studies in Human Knowledge (1927) and The Problem of Universals (1930)-Lewis returned to England.
He continued to publish book reviews for various periodicals until his death in 1960.
The happy and efficient people in this world are those who accept trouble as a normal detail of human life and resolve to capitalize it when it comes along.H. Bertram Lewis
Trouble is the thing that strong men grow by. Met in the right way it is a sure-fire means of putting iron into the victim's will and making him a tougher man to down forever after.H. Bertram Lewis
