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SYDENHAM, THOMAS (1624-1689)

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Originally appearing in Volume V26, Page 278 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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SYDENHAM, See also:THOMAS (1624-1689) , See also:English physician, was See also:born on the loth of See also:September 1624 at Wynford See also:Eagle in See also:Dorset, where his See also:father was a See also:gentleman of See also:property and See also:good See also:pedigree. At the See also:age of eighteen he was entered at Magdalen See also:Hall, See also:Oxford; after a See also:short See also:period his See also:college studies appear to have been interrupted, and he served for a See also:time as an officer in the See also:army of the See also:parliament. He completed his Oxford course in 1648, graduating as See also:bachelor of See also:medicine, and about the same time he was elected a See also:fellow of All Souls College. It was not until nearly See also:thirty years later (1676) that he graduated as M.D., not at Oxford, but at See also:Pembroke Hall, See also:Cambridge, where his eldest son was then an undergraduate. After 1648 he seems to have spent some time studying medicine at Oxford, but he was soon again engaged in military service, and in 1654 he received the sum of £600, as a result of a See also:petition he addressed to See also:Cromwell, setting forth that various arrears were due to two of his See also:brothers who had been killed and that he himself had faithfully served the parliament with the loss of much See also:blood. In 1655 be resigned his fellowship at All Souls and married, and probably a few years later went to study medicine at See also:Montpellier. In 1663 he passed the See also:examinations of the College of Physicians for their See also:licence to practice in See also:Westminster and 6 m. See also:round; but it is probable that he had been settled in See also:London for some time before that. This minimum qualification to practise was the single See also:bond between Sydenham and the College of Physicians through-out the whole of his career. He seems to have been distrusted by some members of the See also:faculty because he was an innovator and something of a See also:plain-dealer. In his See also:letter to See also:John Mapletoft he refers to a class of detractors " qui vitio statim vertunt si quis novi aliquid, ab illis non prius dictum vel etiam inauditum, in See also:medium proferat "; and in a letter to See also:Robert See also:Boyle, written the See also:year before his See also:death (and the only See also:authentic specimen of his English See also:composition that remains), he says, " I have the happiness of curing my patients, at least of having it said concerning me that few miscarry under me; but [I] cannot See also:brag of my correspondency with some other of my faculty .. . . Though yet, in taken See also:fire at my attempts to reduce practice to a greater easiness, plainness, and in the meantime letting the See also:mountebank at Charing See also:Cross pass unrailed at, they contradict themselves, and would make the See also:world believe I may prove more considerable than they would have me." Sydenham attracted to him in warm friendship some of the most discriminating men of his time, such as John See also:Locke and Robert Boyle.

His first See also:

book, Methodus curandi febres, was published in 1666; a second edition, with an additional See also:chapter on the See also:plague, in 1668; and a third edition, much enlarged and bearing the better-known See also:title of Observationes medicae, in 1676. His next publication was in 168o in the See also:form of two Epistolae responsoriae, the one, " On Epidemics, " addressed to Robert See also:Brady, regius See also:professor of physic at Cambridge, and the other " On the Lues venerea, " to See also:Henry Paman, public orator at Cambridge and See also:Gresham professor in London. In 1682 he issued another Dissertatio epistolaris, on the treatment of confluent small-pox and on See also:hysteria, addressed to Dr See also:William See also:Cole of See also:Worcester. The Tractatus de podagra et hydrope came out in 1683, and the Schedula monitoria de novae febris ingressu in 1686. His last completed See also:work, Processus integri, is an outline See also:sketch of See also:pathology and practice; twenty copies of it were printed in 1692, and, being a compendium, it has been more often republished both in See also:England and in other countries than any other of his writings separately. A fragment on pulmonary See also:consumption was found among his papers. His collected writings occupy about 600 pages 8vo, in the Latin, though whether that or English was the See also:language in which they were originally written i3 disputed. Hardly anything is known of Sydenham's See also:personal See also:history in London. He died in London on the 29th of See also:December 1689, and was buried in the See also:church of St See also:James's, Piccadilly, where a mural slab was put up by the College of Physicians in 181o. Although Sydenham was a highly successful practitioner and saw, besides See also:foreign reprints, more than one new edition of his various tractates called for in his lifetime, his fame as the father of English medicine, or the English See also:Hippocrates, was decidedly See also:posthumous. For a See also:long time he was held in vague esteem for the success of his cooling (or rather expectant) treatment of small-pox, for his See also:laudanum (the first form of a See also:tincture of See also:opium), and for his advocacy of the use of Peruvian bark in quartan agues. There were, however, those among his contemporaries who understood something of Sydenham's importance in larger matters than details of treatment and See also:pharmacy, See also:chief among them being the talented See also:Richard See also:Morton.

But the attitude of the academical medicine of the See also:

day is doubtless indicated in See also:Martin See also:Lister's use of the See also:term " sectaries " for Sydenham and his admirers, at a time (1694) when the See also:leader had been dead five years. If there were any doubt that the opposition to him was quite other than See also:political, it would be set at See also:rest by the testimony of Dr See also:Andrew See also:Brown,' who went from See also:Scotland to inquire into Sydenham's practice and has incidentally revealed what was commonly thought of it at the time, in his Vindicatory See also:Schedule concerning the New Cure of Fevers. In the See also:series of Harveian orations at the College of Physicians, Sydenham is first mentioned in the oration of Dr John See also:Arbuthnot (1727), who styles him " aemulus Hippocratis." H. See also:Boerhaave, the See also:Leyden professor, was wont to speak of him in his class (which had always some pupils from England and Scotland) as " Angliae lumen, artis Phoebum, veram Hippocratici viri speciem." A. von See also:Haller also marked one of the epochs in his See also:scheme of medical progress with the name of Sydenham. He is indeed famous because he inaugurated a new method and a better See also:ethics of practice, the See also:worth and diffusive See also:influence of which did not become obvious (except to those who were on the same See also:line with himself, such as Morton) until a good many years afterwards. It remains to consider briefly what his innovations were. First and foremost he did the best he could for his patients, and made as little as possible of the mysteries and traditional dogmas of the See also:craft. All the stories told of him are characteristic. Called to a gentleman who had been subjected to the lowering treatment, and finding him in a pitiful See also:state of hysterical upset, he "conceived that this was occasioned partly by his long illness, partly by the previous evacuations, and partly by emptiness. I therefore ordered him a roast chicken and a See also:pint of See also:canary." A gentleman of See also:fortune who was a victim to hypochondria was at length told by Sydenham that he could do no more for him, but that there was living at See also:Inverness a certain Dr See also:Robertson who had See also:great skill in cases like his; the patient journeyed to Inverness full of See also:hope, and, finding no See also:doctor of the name there, came back to London full of rage, but cured withal of his complaint. Of a piece with this is his famous See also:advice to See also:Sir Richard See also:Blackmore. When See also:Black-more first engaged in the study of physic he inquired of Dr Sydenham what authors he should read, and was directed by that physician to See also:Don Quixote, " which," said he, " is a very good book; I read it still." There were cases, he tells us, in his practice where " I have consulted my patient's safety and my own reputation most effectually by doing nothing at all." It was in the treatment of small-pox that his startling innovations in that direction made most stir.

It would be a See also:

mistake, however, to suppose that Sydenham wrote no long prescriptions, after the See also:fashion of the time, or was entirely See also:free from theoretical See also:bias. Doctrines of disease he had, as every practitioner must have; but he was too much alive to the multiplicity of new facts and to the See also:infinite variety of individual constitutions to aim at symmetry in his theoretical views or at consistency between his practice and his doctrines; and his treatment was what he found to See also:answer best, whether it were secundum artem or not. His fundamental See also:idea was to take diseases as they presented themselves in nature and to draw up a See also:complete picture (" Krankheitsbild " of the Germans) of the See also:objective characters of each. Most forms of See also:ill-See also:health, he insisted, had a definite type, comparable to the types of See also:animal and See also:vegetable See also:species. The conformity of type in the symptoms and course of a malady was due to the uniformity of the cause. The causes that he dwelt upon were the " evident and conjunct causes," or, in other words, the morbid phenomena; the remote causes he thought it vain to seek after. Acute diseases, such as fevers and inflammations, he regarded as a wholesome conservative effort or reaction of the organism to meet the See also:blow of some injurious influence operating from without; in this he followed the Hippocratic teaching closely as well as the I-lippocratic practice of watching and aiding the natural crises. Chronic diseases, on the other See also:hand, were a depraved state of the humours, mostly due to errors of See also:diet and See also:general manner of See also:life, for which we ourselves were directly accountable. Hence his famous dictum: "acutos dico, qui ut plurimum Deum habent authorem, ' See Dr John Brown's Horae subsecivae, See also:art. " Dr Andrew Brown and Sydenham."sicut chronici ipsos nos." Sydenham's nosological method is essentially the See also:modern one, except that it wanted the morbid See also:anatomy See also:part, which was first introduced into the " natural history of disease " by See also:Morgagni nearly a See also:century later. In both departments of See also:nosology, the acute and the chronic, Sydenham contributed largely to the natural history by his own accurate observation and philosophical comparison of See also:case with case and type with type. The Observationes medicae and the first Epistola responsoria contain See also:evidence of a See also:close study of the various fevers, fluxes and other acute maladies of London over a series of years, their See also:differences from year to year and from See also:season to season, together with references to the prevailing See also:weather—the whole See also:body of observations being used to illustrate the See also:doctrine of the " epidemic constitution " of the year or season, which he considered to depend often upon inscrutable telluric causes.

The type of the acute disease varied, he found, according to the year and season, and the right treatment could not be adopted until the type was known. There had been nothing quite like this in medical literature since the Hippocratic See also:

treatise, IIepi hipwv, Marcos, rbawv; and there are probably some germs of truth in it still undeveloped, although the modern See also:science of epidemiology has introduced a whole new set of considerations. Among other things Sydenham is credited with the first diagnosis of scarlatina and with the modern See also:definition of chorea (in Sched. monit.). After small-pox, the diseases to which he refers most are hysteria and See also:gout, his description of the latter (from the symptoms in his own See also:person) being one of the classical pieces of medical See also:writing. While Sydenham's " natural history " method has doubtless been the chief ground of his great posthumous fame, there can be no question that another See also:reason for the admiration of posterity was that which is indicated by R. G. Latham, when he says, " I believe that the moral See also:element of a liberal and candid spirit went hand in hand with the intellectual qualifications of observation, See also:analysis and comparison." Among the lives of Sydenham are one (See also:anonymous) by See also:Samuel See also:Johnson in John See also:Swan's See also:translation of his See also:works (London, 1742), another by C. G. See also:Kuhn in his edition of his works (See also:Leipzig, 1827), and a third by Dr R. G. Latham in his translation of his works published in London by the Sydenham Society in 1848. See also See also:Frederic See also:Picard, Sydenham, sa See also:vie, ses oeuvres (See also:Paris, 1889), and J.

F. See also:

Payne, T. Sydenham (London, 1900). Dr John Brown's Locke and Sydenham," in Horae subsecivae (See also:Edinburgh, 1858), is of the nature of eulogy. Many collected See also:editions of his works have been published, as well as See also:translations into English, See also:German, See also:French and See also:Italian. Dr W. A. Greenhill's Latin See also:text (London, 1844, Syd. See also:Soc.) is a See also:model of editing and indexing. The most interesting See also:summary of doctrine and practice by the author himself is the introduction to the 3rd edition of Observationes medicae (1676).

End of Article: SYDENHAM, THOMAS (1624-1689)

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