Selected works of Thomas Sydenham, M.D : with a short biography and explanatory notes / by John D. Comrie.

  • Thomas Sydenham
Date:
1922
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected works of Thomas Sydenham, M.D : with a short biography and explanatory notes / by John D. Comrie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    * Don Quixote ’; it is a very good book ; I read it myself still,” replied the latter, indicating at once his contempt for the medical literature of the time and the knowledge to be gained from Cervantes’s romance as to the foibles of mankind. The intolerance shown by the great clinician for the other branches of medical study is also traditional from the oft-quoted remark to Sir Hans Sloane who in early life came to Sydenham as a pupil, bringing a letter of introduction which described him as “a ripe scholar, a good botanist, a skilful anatomist.” Sydenham, after reading the letter is reputed to have remarked, “This is all very fine, but it won’t do—Anatomy—Botany—Non¬ sense ! 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.” Apart from this conversa¬ tion, which is probably exaggerated, Sydenham was very kind to the rising young physician, and they were frequent companions on drives out of London in Syden¬ ham’s carriage. On one of these occasions Sloane con¬ sulted him about a project of going to Jamaica to study plants. Sydenham meditated the matter till the coach stopped in the Green Park and Sloane alighted to walk home, when Sydenham exclaimed, “ No, you must not go to Jamaica; you had better drown yourself in Rosa¬ mund’s pond, as you go home.” (The favourite place of the day for suicides, in St. James's Park). Sloane, however, did go to Jamaica, with fortunate results to the science of botany as well as for his own reputation. Sydenham’s sense of humour, as well as the liberties which he could take with his patients on occasion is well brought out in the anecdote, not so well known as the others, which Paris records in his “ Pharmacologia ” as illustrative of the medicine of the mind. “ That great physician (Sydenham) having long attended a gentleman of fortune with little or no advan-
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