' 143 THOMAS SYDENHAM, THE ENGLISH HIPPOCRATES. "THOMAS SYDENHAM, THE ENGLISH HIPPOCRATES."1 % w. H. Coupland, L.R.C.P.Edin., Senior Assistant Medical Officer, The Royal Albert Asylum for Idiots, Lancaster. Gentlemen,?Iii the paper that1 had the this Club, entitled "Sir Thomas Browne, ^"^^^anyhmen- tioned pmitpinnoraries, and quoted an anecdote concerning one of his Thomas the of theo^mp ^ Sydenham, greatest physician ^ and one called tl century, who has been _ J ^ Of in e 0f niy him I purpose to and speak to-night, him remarks I shall mention others of his time v, ^uenced either m the intellectualinteilec by their friendship or by their position world of that day. , .j t <-omi can must of be omi ,, only Many particulars necessity ^ attempt a mere sketch of his career, leaving 5 c ^ have used interest is aroused, to refer to some of the ma and ia en^on t0 which is before me; and among this I } the editions of the works of Sydenham issue? Sydenham " J,,. f0 the "Life to the of National Biogi y > Society; Dictionary (< iiellt of written Dr. Samuel John on Sydenham," by ^ Mr. and to^m Doctors," by Bettany; also "Masters of Medicine" Series, writtenespecially^: b) ? Payne-who wrote the article in the " Dictionary of a, 1 i>;0crraphy,"?a ^ book to am accu ' 0rmation, many which I indebted for much , points in the career of our hero jn obscurity, j?emS ivnwn ' to be found Lastly, to that essay, by in " delightful L>i-0111, friend Horae Subsecivl," in which j Locke, the are so > My physician-philosopher, and has paper is, I will at once confess, but a mass extracts, common been compiled the aid of scissoi s 1 only by jc factor in the of literary work, for, like Molieie, 1prcnds tnon hi*? -.v. etiologyi j 111011 bien ou jc le trouve. Thomas Sydenham, " the man of many vnown Sydenham's mother was killed auiiu0 for the have been year 1644. His stay in the army cannot of the Lancastei rjlni "^T a(Wress delivered at tlie annual meeting 2,Kia.uuar y "or. in- Med. Joum., April 1905. 144 W. H. COUPLAND. in 1648 he took the degree of Bachelor of Physic at Oxford, very little preparation for which sufficed in those elastic days, when curricula and degrees could be easily attained by influence, either active or passive. On 3rd October of the same year he was made a Fellow of All Souls' College in the place of one of the expelled Eoyalists, and after staying at the for some little time, " university according to Desault in his Dissertation on Consumptions," he took a journey to the celebrated medical school at Montpellier in France. It seems that he took up the study of medicine owing to the influence and advice of a Dr. Th. Coxe, for in his " Medical Observations," third edition, Sydenham wrote: " It is now the thirtieth year since the time when, being on my way to London, in order to go from thence a second time to Oxford (from which the misfortunes of the first war had kept me for some years), I had the good fortune to fall in with the most learned and honourable Dr. Thomas who was Coxe, at that time attending my brother during an and as illness, then, he has been up to the present time, practising medicine with great distinction. He, with his well-known kindness and courtesy, asked me what profession I was preparing to enter, now that I was resuming my interrupted studies, and was come to man's estate. I had at that time no fixed plans, and was not even dreaming of the profession of medicine ; but moved by the recommendation and influence a of so great man, and in some way, I suppose, by my own destiny, I applied myself seriously to that pursuit. And certainly, if my efforts have turned out to be of the least public utility, the credit must be referred to was thankfully him who the patron and promoter of my early studies. After spending a few years in the university, I returned to London and entered on the practice of medicine." It is probable, although the point had not been settled in Dr. mind when he Payne's wrote his life, that Sydenham was pre- sented with the M. A. degree; however, by command of the Earl of Pembroke, he was inducted to the Bachelorship of Medicine on 14th April 1648, and it is apparent that this installation was hurried on to allow of him being made a Fellow of All Souls', as has been previously mentioned. Unlike practitioners of to-day, he obtained his qualification at the beginning instead of at the end of his student's course, but we shall with the remark of " agree apt Dr. Payne, who says, If we consider the incalculable gain to the science of medicine involved in making Sydenham a doctor, we must admit that seldom has the blind Goddess of Patronage dis- pensed her favours with a happier hand." The year 1647 was a stirring one for the University of Oxford, for the Parliament then appointed Visitors, of necessity advanced Puritans, to control it and to make fresh appointments. Any opposition was futile, as the University had to capitulate to the Earl of Pembroke in March 1648, who expelled about 400 Eoyalists; and we learn that in "THOMAS SYDENHAM, THE ENGLISH HIPrOCEATES." 145 September, the month after the overthrow had been completed, Sydenham entered Wadham College as a Fellow Commoner, lor views of some colleges at this time we can consult the volumes of Alumni Oxoniensis, one of which is before me. Some of the men thus forcibly introduced were afterwards famous, the names including Wallis, the mathematician; Seth Ward, Professor of Astronomy, one who had been previously ejected from Cambridge; also the celebrated Willis, of the group of Invisible Philosophers, the forerunners of the Boyal Society of London; there was Jonathan Goddard, Warden of Merton College and Cromwell's physician, who, it has been reported, made the first telescope in England; and many others, of whom we can learn much in the pages of the amusing, if not too accurate, historian, Anthony a Wood. He describes some of the scholars who came from Cambridge, "as the dregs of the neighbour University," as having a peculiar cut of their hair, which he styled the committee cut, with their clothes so shabby that they looked like apprentices or antiquated schoolboys. During the Puritan rule there were vastly more sermons than the modern Verdant Green would care . to hear, much less to transcribe, which was then the regulation. In his history of the Rebellion, Clarendon confesses that the " depopulation so roughly carried out yielded a harvest of extra- ordinary good and sound knowledge in all parts of learning," and, as has been noticed often in the course of the world's history, a period of political or military activity is succeeded by a revival of mental and intellectual output. This was so at this time, for the Eenaissance must be largely credited to the influence of the Commonwealth and not to that of Charles it., the Puritans making their appointments with great foresight, and choosing young men for promotion, while the scholars were kept under stern, steady discipline, which certainly increased their industry. Regarding medicine, Dr. Norman Moore remarked in the Lectures^ " Fitzpatrick of last year, that Sydenham is often regarded as the originator of modern medicine; his works might also be considered the culmina- tion of the effects of the Eenaissance." John Evelyn visited Oxford in 1654 and at other times, and in his diary has left us an impres- sion of the people he met there; he thought Dr. Wm. Petty, who was the deputy reader in Anatomy, a genius, for indeed he was a master of many sciences, being really the one who founded the study of demography or vital statistics. Petty was a friend of Hobbes of Malmesbury, and if Sydenham had been at all interested in anatomy he could not but have benefited by contact with him, and so lessened the narrow view he always had of matters scientific, since doubtless Hobbes' method of looking at phenomena would have appealed to him, filtered as it would have been through Petty's mind. The statutes authorised one dissection yearly, performed in the Lent term if possible; and in 1650 it fell to Petty's lot to revive a woman, named Anne Greene, who had been hung at 10 ED. MED. 626?NEW SER.?VOL. XXII.?II. 146 \V. H. COUPLAND. Oxford, but whose body on being brought for dissection was found not to be dead, the case creating much interest at the time. At Oxford at this period the opportunities for medical study were small. There was no clinical work, but a bi-weekly lecture by the Professor of Medicine 011 a text from the writings of Hippocrates or Galen. There was some regular teaching on anatomy, a subject which never appealed to Sydenham, and for the want of a knowledge of which he made some serious mistakes later as in his writings on, for instance in his work on Dropsy. in our Lower, associated minds with the tubercle of that name, the all-round and genius Christopher Wren?better known as an architect than as a scientist?founded their work on a know- ledge of the circulation which for " Sydenham entirely ignored, he We said: may know the larger organs of the body, but its minute structure will always be hidden from us.