Aug-Sep 72

XVIIth CENTURY ENGLISH PHYSICIANS

Selected Readings

Thomas SYDENHAM 1624-1689 Dewhurst, Kenneth: Dr. Thomas Sydenham; his life and original writings. WZ 250/S982D/1966

Sir Thomas BROWNE 1605-1682 Keynes, Geoffrey (ed): Sir Thomas Browne; selected writings. WA 250/B884k/1968

Huntley, Frank L: Sir Thomas Browne; a biographical and critical study. WZ 100/B884H/1968

Osler, Sir William: 11 Sir Thomas Browne" pp. 248-277 in An Alabama Student and other biographical essays. WZ 112/~2a/1909 also in Selected Writings of Sir William Osler (pp. 40-61) W Z 9 / 082 s e / 1 9 51

Thomas WILLIS 1621-1675 Isler, Hansruedi Thomas Willis, doctor and scientist. WZ 100/W735I/1968 (I. The Life and Times of Willis, pp. 3-44; II. Willis' Works, pp. 45-185; III. Conclusion, pp. 186-197)

Richardson, Sir Benjamin Ward: Disciples of Aesculapius. 2 v. WZ 112/R52ld/1900 vol!, pp. 158-175. "Richard Wiseman" 1622-1676 vol II, pp. 592-616. "Thomas Willis'' II, pp. 636-65 5. 11 Sir Thomas Browne" II, pp. 656-673. "Thomas Sydenham" .. 'I

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,._ 1- .. • Thomas SYDENHAM 1624-89

A Puritan captain of cavalry during the civil war period, SYDENHAM came to medicine relatively late. He became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1663.

He stood apart from all previous medical theorizing, disregarding all his predecessors save Hippocrates. His emphasis on observation and clinical experience was certainly Hippocratic; "on the other hand, his plan to observe and classify disease according to species as if they were plants is as far from Hippocrates as could be. For better or worse Hippocrates observed sick people, not diseases.

Symptoms served him as indicators of the status of the patient, not as a basis for classification. 11 (Ackerknecht).

SYDENHAM 1s notion of 'epidemic constitutions I maintains that contagious diseases are influenced by cosmic forces, that they may spring from miasms from the bowels of the earth, and that they may have long periods of evolution and seasonal variation. (Garrison).

11 SYDENHAM 1s greatness lies in his clinical observation and his relatively reasonable treatment. He is justly famous for his studies of malarial fevers, dysentery, measles, scarlet fever, and the chorea minor which bears his name.

His best known work is his treatise on gout, of which he was a sufferer. His treatise on hysteria, in which he claimed that half of his nonfever patients, male and female, suffered from what is today called 1psychosomatic I disease, is a masterpiece of sober description.

11 His methods differed considerably from those of most of his contemporaries, although even he did not escape the temptations to extensive bloodletting. It is much to his credit that he adopted, after initial resistance, the one great specific that

appeared at this time - quinine, imported from Peru in the 1630 1 s." (Ackerknecht) Thomas WILLIS 1621-75

WILLIS, Professor of Natural Philosophy at Oxford, published his celebrated

Cerebri Anatome in 1664 (illustrations by Christopher Wren, later architect of

St. Paul' s.) It was the most complete and accurate account of the nervous system which had appeared to that time. It contains a classification of the cerebral nerves, the first description of the spinal accessory nerve, and a description of the hexagonal network of arteries at the base of the brain which is called by his name.

In 1666 WILLIS moved to London, where he acquired the largest and most fashionable practice of his day. He was the first to notice the sweetish taste of diabetic urine. In his London Practice of Physic he described the symptonr-complex of myasthenia gravis. He gave a good account of an epidemic of typhoid fever during the Civil Wars. He was the first to describe and name puerperal fever. He added the term 'Neurology' to the English language (though it had a somewhat different connotation to WILLIS than it does to us.) He gives striking clinical pictures of general paralysis. H i s Pharmaceutice Rationalis (1674) is a valuable epitome of the materia medica of his time, and was praised by Osler for its description of whooping-cough. (Adapted from Garrison)

On the occasion of the tercentenary of the Cerebri Anatome, the McGill

University Press published a sumptious facsimile edition of this work, as

Englished by Pordage in 1681. It is exhibited here. Richard WISEMAN 1622- 76

Little is known concerning the details of WISEMAN's life.

He first appears as a surgeon in the Civil Wars, on the Royalist side, during the reign of Charles I. During the ensuing period of

Cromwell and the Commonwealth, WISEMAN accompanied Prince

Charles II, in his wanderings on the Continent. On the Restoration,

WISEMAN was made Sergeant-Surgeon to the king. His Several

Chirurgical Treatises was first published in 1676. (Exhibited here is an edition of 1719.)

"When the young chirurgeon shall find the cure easie in theory, but often delude his best endeavors; when the bystanders shall begin to accuse him of knavery in his proceedings, and think him to pull back a cure, whilst he is rolling Sysiphus his stone, which will tumble down whether he will or not; he will then wish that all other practitioners had done what I have done in this treatise, viz., recommend their observations, both successful and unsuccessful, thereby increasing knowledge in our profession, and leaving seamarks for the discovery of such rocks as they themselves have split upon. 11 Sir Thomas BROWNE 1605-82

BROWNE practiced at Norwich for over 40 years, but he belongs more to the world of literature than to that of medicine. His Religio Medici

(1642), with its vigorous and colorful language, is an attempt to reconcile scientific skepticism with faith. "BROWNE has a rare quaintness, a love of odd conceits, and the faculty of apt illustrations drawn from out-of-the -way sources. BROWNE's bookishness is of a delightful kind, and yet, as he maintains, his best matter is not picked from the leaves of any author, but bred among the 'weeds and tares I of his own brain. In his style there is a lack of what the moderns call technique, but how pleasant it is to follow his thoughts, rippling like a burn, not the stilted formality of the technical artist in works. 11 (Osler)

In 1646 BROWNE published his Pseudodoxia Epidemica; or

Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors, which is his most "scientific" work, and still a great delight to peruse. Exhibited here is the second

(folio) edition of 1650. 143400-4 PENCIU P

HEAL TH EOUCA T ION THRO UGH THE AGES (F RE)

SANTE PUBLIQUE (BUCUR), 12,331-41, 1969

~RABIA, EGYPT, ENGLISH ABSTRACT, EUROPE, EUROPE, EASTERN, GREECE, *HEALTH EDUC AT ION /HISTORY, HI STOR ICA l AR Tl CLE, HISTORY OF MEDICINE, ANCIENT,. HI STORY CF MEDICINE, 18TH CENT., HI STORY OF MEDICINE, 19TH CENT., HI STORY Of ~EOICINE, MEDIEVAL, HISTORY OF MEOICI~E, M ER • W • U R fl 1-l!= l lH Willis, Anatomy of the brain and nerves facsimile of the 1681 edition, .published by the McGill University Press, 1965 drawings by Sir Christopher Wren -

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