Thomas Sydenham
Thomas Sydenham
Thomas Sydenhamwas an English physician. He was the author of Observationes Medicae which became a standard textbook of medicine for two centuries so that he became known as 'The English Hippocrates'. Among his many achievements was the discovery of a disease, Sydenham's Chorea, also known as St Vitus Dance...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionDoctor
Date of Birth10 September 1624
god disease
Acute [diseases] meaning those of which God is the author, chronic meaning those that originate in ourselves.
men garden letters
This is all very fine, but it won't do-Anatomy-botany-Nonsense! Sir, I know an old woman in Covent Garden, who understands botany better, and as for anatomy, my butcher can dissect a joint full as well; no, young man, all that is stuff; you must go to the bedside, it is there alone you can learn disease! Comment to Hans Sloane on Robert Boyle's letter of introduction describing Sloane as a 'ripe scholar, a good botanist, a skilful anatomist'.
art exercise practice
The art of medicine was to be properly learned only from its practice and its exercise.
men medicine oxford
Physick, says Sydenham, is not to bee learned by going to Universities, but hee is for taking apprentices; and says one had as good send a man to Oxford to learn shoemaking as practising physick.
book good-book very-good
Read Don Quixote; it is a very good book; I still read it frequently.
men weather medicine
As no man can say who it was that first invented the use of clothes and houses against the inclemency of the weather, so also can no investigator point out the origin of Medicine - mysterious as the source of the Nile.
lying philosophical writing
In writing the history of a disease, every philosophical hypothesis whatsoever, that has previously occupied the mind of the author, should lie in abeyance.
men arteries
A man is as old as his arteries.
wise kings simple
Gout, unlike any other disease, kills more rich men than poor, more wise men than simple. Great kings, emperors, generals, admirals and philosophers have all died of gout.