Copy 1, Volume 1

The works of Thomas Sydenham, M.D / Translated from the Latin edition of Dr. Greenhill, with a life of the author, by R.G. Latham.

  • Sydenham, Thomas, 1624-1689.
Date:
1848-1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The works of Thomas Sydenham, M.D / Translated from the Latin edition of Dr. Greenhill, with a life of the author, by R.G. Latham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    opinion which I have held to up to the present hour, viz., that the art of medicine was to be properly learned only from its practice and its exercise; and that, in all probability, he would be the best skilled in the detection of the true and genuine in- dications of treatment, who had the most diligently and the most accurately attended to the natural phenomena of disease. To this, then, I wholly devoted myself; being fully sure that, although I might say with Lucretius, — * Avia terrarum peragro loca, nullius ante Trita solo,! yet, that with Nature for my guide, I should swerve not a nail’s breadth from the true way. With this clue, I directed my attention to the close observation of Fevers; and, after getting over no few anxieties, and after many troublesome agitations of spirit, wherewith I allowed myself during my first years to be distressed, I, at length, hit upon a mode of curing them. This, owing to the request of my friends, I was per- suaded to publish some time ago. After that, however, I observed that new forms of fever, hitherto unknown to me, suc- ceeded each other regularly. Hereupon I resolved to apply all the care I was master of in collecting together the charac- teristics and the complications of each, hoping thus to make up for the scantiness and deficiencies of my earlier work by a closer and a more absolute history of the diseases in question. Now, whilst I was reflecting upon these things, whilst I was hard at work in my investigations, and whilst I was wholly absorbed in the grand operation of forging a Delphie sword? in the shape of some methodus medendi which should meet all cases, from amidst the multiformities and the versatihties of Nature, I ! Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, i, 928; iv, 1.— Terrarum, rectius Pieridum. ? 'The phrase Delphic sword was applied to anything that could be accommodated to a variety of purposes. (Erasmus, Adag., chil. ii, cent. 3, prov. 69.) Compare Infr., iv, 3, 14.—[G.] Sydenham evidently uses the phrase in a good sense, applying it to a remedy, which was (or was supposed to be) equally fit for a variety of diseases. Without venturing upon the negative statement, that this is never the classical use of the expression, I may observe that it is a slight deviation from the power given to it by Aristotle: Nature makes nothing, as the armourers make Delphic swords, meanly ; but one instrument for one purpose.—Ov0ey yap $vctc wOLEL rotovrov SLO Oe xarybrorot paxydipay AeXótkgv, wevixows, dAXa £v wpdg év. (Vide Erasm. Adag., loc. cit.)