Thomas Sydenham Quotations

Physick, says Sydenham, is not to bee learned by going to Universities, but hee is for taking apprentices; and says one had as good send a man to Oxford to learn shoemaking as practising physick.

Gout, unlike any other disease, kills more rich men than poor, more wise men than simple. Great kings, emperors, generals, admirals and philosophers have all died of gout.

We may ascertain the worth of the human race, since for its sake God's Only-begotten Son became man, and thereby ennobled the nature that he took upon him.

Disease is nothing else but an attempt on the part of the body to rid itself of morbific matter.

It is my nature to thin where others read.

I confidently affirm that the greater part of those who are supposed to have died of gout, have died of the medicine rather than the disease - a statement in which I am supported by observation.

This is all very fine, but it won't do-Anatomy-botany-Nonsense! Sir, I know an old woman in Covent Garden, who understands botany better, and as for anatomy, my butcher can dissect a joint full as well; no, young man, all that is stuff; you must go to the bedside, it is there alone you can learn disease! Comment to Hans Sloane on Robert Boyle's letter of introduction describing Sloane as a 'ripe scholar, a good botanist, a skilful anatomist'.

Nothing in medicine is so insignificant as to merit attention.

Gout produces calculus in the kidney... the patient has frequently to entertain the painful speculation as to whether gout or stone be the worst disease. Sometimes the stone, on passing, kills the patient, without waiting for the gout.

In writing the history of a disease, every philosophical hypothesis whatsoever, that has previously occupied the mind of the author, should lie in abeyance.