SYDENHAM, THOMAS, the "sommo Ippocratista inglese" (supreme English Hippocratist), as Puccinotti styles him; born in Winford Eagle in Dorsetshire in 1624. That he belonged to one of the county families; that at 18 he was en tered at Magdalen Hall, Oxford; that his studies were, after two years, inter rupted by his having to serve as an offi cer in the parliamentarian army; that his Oxford curriculum ended in 1648 when he graduated M. B., and shortly after became a Fellow of All Souls—is the sum of our knowledge as to his youth and early manhood. For the next 15 years we lose sight of him. We find him in London in 1663 as a licentiate of the College of. Physicians, publishing his "Method of Curing Fevers" in 1666; and 10 years thereafter taking his M. D. at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. The "Iatro physical" and "Chemiatric" theories in fashion at the time he treated with scant consideration, and looked on chemistry itself as a mere branch of the apothe cary's business. In 1668 he published a second edition of his book on 'fevers, adding to it a chapter on plague, with a fine poem in Latin elegiacs addressed to him by Locke. A third and enlarged edi tion, entitled "Medical Observations," ap peared in 1676. In 1680 he published two "Letters in Response," the one "On Epidemics," and the other on the "Lues Venera." His "Epistolary Dissertation"
on confluent smallpox and hysteria (1682) was followed next year by his yet more famous "Treatise on Podagra," in 1686 appeared his "On the New Fe ver," and in 1692 his last work, an out line of pathology and therapeutics. An acute attack of gout carried him off Dec. 29, 1689, and he was interred in St. James's Church, Piccadilly, where in 1810 the College of Physicians erected a mural tablet to his memory.
Sydenham's place in the history of medicine has already been given. Seem ingly behind his age in science he was really ahead of it in practice. In acute disease he read the forthputting of that activity by which nature sought to right herself—an activity to be watched and, when possible, to be assisted. Chronic diseases he also viewed with the eye of Hippocrates, as due to habits or errors for which we ourselves are mainly re sponsible, and these he met by appro priate changes in diet and mode of life. Among special contributions to nosology he may be said to have first diagnosed scarlatina and classified chorea. Gout was another ailment on which he left a memorable mark.