SYDENHAM, THOMAS (1624-1689), English physician, was born on Sept. io, 1624, at Wynford Eagle, Dorset, the son of a country gentleman. He received his M. B. from Oxford in 1648, and about the same time became a fellow of All Souls. After further study and a period of service in the Puritan army, Sydenham continued his researches at Montpellier. In 1663 he passed the examinations of the College of Physicians and was thereby able to practise in London. In 1676 he became M.D. of Cambridge. He died in London on Dec. 29, 1689.
Sydenham's fame among his contemporaries rested on his suc cessful cooling treatment of smallpox, on his laudanum (the first form of a tincture of opium), and on his use of Peruvian bark in quartan agues. But his more important contributions to medi cine soon became recognized, and he himself regarded as the Eng lish Hippocrates. He revived the Hippocratic idea of Epidemic Constitutions, and made an elaborate study of the variations in epidemics of different diseases according to different seasons, years and ages. Further, rejecting the traditional dogmas of medicine and insisting that observation should have precedence over theory, Sydenham diligently studied the natural histories of diseases and contended that most forms of ill-health could be ranked in certain definite species. His title of the founder of modern clinical medicine is warranted by his clear accounts of the diseases of his day, especially of malaria, plague, smallpox, hys teria and gout. Sydenham is also credited with the first diagnosis of scarletina and with the modern definition of cholera. Acute diseases, such as fevers and inflammations, he regarded as a wholesome effort of the organism to resist injurious influences operating from without, but chronic diseases he held to be due to a depraved state of the humours arising from errors of diet and methods of life.
Sydenham's chief works are: Methodus curandi febres (1666), which appeared in a 3rd edition under the better-known title of Observationes medicae (1676) ; two Epistolae responsoriae (168o), one "on Epidemics" and one "on the Lues venerea"; Dissertatio epistolaris (1682), an account of hysteria, and Tractatus de podagra et hydrope (1683), his famous description of gout. His last completed work, Process= integri, is an outline sketch of pathology and prac tice; twenty copies of it were printed in 1692, and, being a compen dium, it has been more often republished both in England and in other countries than any other of his writings separately. A fragment on pulmonary consumption was found among his papers. His col lected writings occupy about 600 pages 8vo, in the Latin, though whether that or English was the language in which they were origi nally written is disputed. The collected works appeared at Amsterdam (1683), and lastly in London (1846, edit. W. A. Greenhill). An Eng. trans., together with a biography, was produced by R. G. Latham (2 vols., London, 1848).
See also F. Picard, Sydenham, sa vie, ses oeuvres (1889) ; J. F. Payne, T. Sydenham (19oo) ; and M. Greenwood, "Sydenham as an Epidemiologist," in the Proceedings of the Royal Soc. of Medicine (vol. xii., 1919).