Sydenham, Thomas

Sydenham, Thomas, 1624–89, English physician, called "the English Hippocrates." He studied at Oxford and Montpellier, and practiced in London. His conceptions of the causes and treatments of epidemics and his classic descriptions of gout, smallpox, malaria, scarlet fever, hysteria, and chorea established him as a founder of modern clinical medicine and epidemiology. He advocated direct observation instead of theorizing to determine the nature of disease and introduced the use of such drugs as cinchona bark (containing quinine) in treating malaria, and laudanum in treating other disorders.

Bibliography

See studies by J. F. Payne (1900) and D. Riesman (1926); K. Dewhurst, Dr. Thomas Sydenham, 1624–1689: His Life and Original Writings (1966).

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Sydenham, Thomas

(born 1624, Wynford Eagle, Dorset, Eng.—died Dec. 29, 1689, London) British physician. His Observationes medicae (1676) was a standard textbook for two centuries, noted for its detailed observations and the accuracy of its records. His treatise on gout (1683) is considered his masterpiece. He was among the first to explain the nature of hysteria and St. Vitus dance (Sydenham chorea) and to use iron to treat iron-deficiency anemia. Sydenham also named scarlet fever and differentiated it from measles, first used laudanum (a solution of opium in alcohol) as a medication, and helped popularize the use of quinine for malaria.

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Sydenham, Thomas 

Born Sept. 10, 1624, in Wynford Eagle, Dorset; died Dec. 29, 1689, in London. British physician; one of the founders of clinical medicine.

Sydenham studied at Oxford and Montpellier, practiced in London, and became a doctor of medicine in 1676. He gave classical descriptions of scarlet fever, chorea, gout, and many other diseases as specific nosological forms. Sydenham popularized the use of quinine in treating malaria. He rejected both the legacy of medieval scholastic medicine and the dogmatic systems of iatrophysics and iatrochemistry.

Sydenham regarded disease as a process, as “an effort of Nature, who strives with might and main to restore the health of the patient by the elimination of morbific matter.” He sought to understand the body’s self-healing potential, particularly the beneficial role of fever. His innovative views earned him the name of “the English Hippocrates.” Sydenham’s system of practical medicine based on the observation of patients greatly influenced many physicians of the second half of the 17th and the 18th century, including H. Boerhaave, J. Locke, and the British physician R. Bright, the founder of nephrology.

WORKS

Methodus curandifebres, propriis observationibus. London, 1666.
Observationes medicae circa morborum acutorum historiam et curationem. London, 1676.
Opera universa. London, 1685.

REFERENCES

Meyer-Steineg, T., and K. Sudhoff. Istoriia meditsiny. Moscow-Leningrad, 1925. (Translated from German.)
Kushev, N.”Sidenham.” Vrachebnoedelo, 1926, no. 21.
Person, S. A. “Osnovopolozhnik klinicheskoi meditsiny Thomas Sidenkhem.” Klinicheskaia meditsina, 1965, vol. 43, no. 11.
Major, R. H. A History of Medicine, vol. 1. Oxford, 1954.
Bariéty, M., and C. Coury. Histoire de la médecine. Paris, 1963.
Geschichte der Medizin. Edited by A. Mette and I. Winter. Berlin, 1968.

P. E. ZABLUDOVSKII