Dr. Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689): his life and original writings / [edited by] Kenneth Dewhurst.

  • Thomas Sydenham
Date:
1966
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Dr. Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689): his life and original writings / [edited by] Kenneth Dewhurst. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    he gradually developed a clinical picture of a disease-process together with its response to various forms of treatment. For my own part [he wrote], 1 1 think we have lived thus long without an accurate history of diseases, for this especial reason; viz. that the generality have considered that disease is but a confused and disordered effort of Nature thrown down from her proper state, and defending herself in vain; so that they have classed the attempts at a just description with the attempts to wash blackamoors white. Sydenham then tried to link his case-histories with other morbid states and with the type of environment which ushered in the illness. These correlations were then assembled into disease-histories, and whereas his case-histories were merely a series of individual records, this wider classification provided him with a clinical repository from which empirical generalizations could be drawn. He did, however, stress that disease-histories must always be tested and re-examined in the light of any subsequent observations. Sydenham was reluctant to subdivide a class of diseases unless the morbid condition could be cured, or vastly improved, by some new method of treatment. 1 So far Sydenham's methodology is eminently Baconian: indeed his main critic, Dr. Henry Stubbe, described him as a semi-virtuoso. And again when urging Boyle to discontinue his experimental work, which he thought was undermining religion, and established practice, Stubbe clearly regarded him as one of the supporters of the Royal Society. I know not what any physician may, as the mode is, tell you to your face, but except it be such as Dr. Sydenham and young Coxe I believe not one lives that doth not condemn your experimental philosophy. 2 Of Sydenham's closest colleagues only Charles Goodall was not a Fellow of the Royal Society. Boyle, Locke, Needham, Sloane, Hooke, and Millington were amongst the more illustrious Fellows who were also Sydenham's closest friends. There were several others with whom he was on friendly, though less intimate, terms. Sir William Petty (1623-87), physician, political economist, and a fellow- victim of the gout, was his near neighbour in Pall Mall. Another former Parliamentarian was Dr. Jonathan Goddard (1627-79). After serving Cromwell in Ireland, Scotland, and at the Battle of Worcester, he was appointed Warden of Merton College, Oxford, and later be came Professor of Physic at Gresham College. He had been a member of Cromwell's Council of State at the same time as Sydenham's brother. Goddard was also a founder-Fellow of the Royal Society, and 1 Thomas Sydenham, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 15-16. 2 T. Birch, op. cit., vol. 1, p. cxv, 4 June, 1670.