The Works of Thomas Sydenham, M.D.

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Sydenham Society, 1848 - 671 pages
This is considered the best English translations of Sydenham's works.
 

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Page 13 - In the first place, it is necessary that all diseases be reduced to definite and certain species, and that, with the same care which we see exhibited by botanists in their phytologies...
Page lxxviii - MONSEIGNEUR dans quatre jours, et de la fièvre, et du dévoiement, que s'il n'y réussit, je crois qu'on le jettera par les fenêtres ; mais si ses prophéties sont aussi véritables qu'elles l'ont été pour tous les malades qu'il a traités , je dirai qu'il lui faut un temple comme à Esculape. C'est dommage que Molière soit mort , il ferait une scène merveilleuse de Daquin...
Page 17 - Nature, it was natural that the practice should coincide with it. This aimed at one point only — it strove to help Nature in her struggles as it best could. With this view, it limited the province of medical art to the support of Nature when she was enfeebled, and to the coercion of her when she was outrageous...
Page 29 - A disease, however much its cause may be adverse to the human body, is nothing more than an effort of Nature, who strains with might and main to restore the health of the patient, by the elimination of the morbific matter.
Page lxxiii - I have the happiness of curing my patients, at least of having it said concerning me that few miscarry under me; but [I] cannot brag of my correspondency with some other of my faculty...
Page 6 - You know how thoroughly my method [of curing fevers] is approved of by an intimate and common friend of ours, and one who has closely and exhaustively examined the subject— I mean Mr. John Locke, a man whom, in the acuteness of his intellect, in the steadiness of his judgment, and in the simplicity, that is, in the excellence, of his manners, I confidently declare to have amongst the men of our own time few equals and no superior.
Page 15 - the sure and distinct perception of peculiar symptoms," shrewdly emphasizing that these symptoms may be "referred less to the disease than to the doctor." He held that "Nature, in the production of disease, is uniform and consistent; so much so, that for the same disease in different persons, the symptoms are for the most part the same; and the self-same phenomena that you would observe in the sickness of a Socrates you would observe in the sickness of a simpleton
Page lxxii - As it is palpable to all the world, how fatal that disease proves to many of all ages, so it is most clear to me, from all the observations that I can possibly make, that if no mischief be done, either by physician or nurse, it is the most slight and safe of all other diseases.

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