Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/256

 account of the mode of life which he adopted to ward off or control its attacks. In 1689 he suffered severely from calculus, and died on 29 Dec. at the house in Pall Mall which he had occupied for many years. He was buried on 31 Dec. in St. James's Church, Westminster. The original memorial having been destroyed, a mural tablet was erected in 1810 by the College of Physicians, commemorating the great physician in Virgilian phrase as ‘Medicus in omne ævum nobilis.’ It appears from his will (an executor of which was Mr. Malthus, a Pall Mall apothecary and great-grandfather of Robert Malthus, the economist [q. v.]) that his wife died before him.

Sydenham left three sons—William, Henry, and James, all of whom were alive at the time of his death. William, the eldest, entered Pembroke College, Cambridge, as a pensioner, about 1674. He became licentiate of the College of Physicians in 1687, and died about 1738. Sydenham speaks of him with great affection, mentioning some of the illnesses for which he treated him, and wrote for his use the practical manual of medicine called ‘Processus Integri,’ which was published after the author's death; and he bequeathed to him his lands in Hertfordshire and Leicestershire. Three children of this William Sydenham were also living at the date of the physician's death. Another grandson, Theophilus Sydenham, was living in 1747, when he presented a portrait of his grandfather to the College of Physicians. Sydenham's niece Mary married Walter Thornhill and became the mother of Sir James Thornhill [q. v.], the well-known painter. By Sydenham's will thirty pounds were bequeathed to aid the professional education of the young artist, his nephew. The family of Sydenham can be traced in the next century, and representatives of it are, it is believed, still living.

Sydenham's personal character has been universally recognised as noble, modest, and sincere. His dominant trait was his earnest endeavour to work for the good of mankind, both in his own immediate circle and in times to come. He had only done his duty in making his observations as accurately as possible, and publishing them for the public advantage. ‘For I have always thought,’ he says, ‘that to have published for the benefit of afflicted mortals any certain method of subduing even the slightest disease, was a matter of greater felicity than the riches of a Tantalus or a Crœsus’ (Epistolæ Responsoriæ, addressed to Dr. Brady, Latham's edition, ii. 5). Among the instances of his practical benevolence is that of his lending one of his own horses to a poor patient for whom he thought horse exercise would be beneficial. The only suggestion of an unfavourable side to his character is that of an occasional bitterness of speech, and this is confirmed by the strong undercurrent of resentment against those whom he regarded as his enemies, which is traceable in his works. His writings exhibit deep piety and strong religious convictions, such as might be expected from his parentage and education. That he thought deeply upon theological subjects is evident from a letter addressed to him by Charles Blount the ‘deist’ (quoted in Biographia Britannica, 1747, ii. 837), and from the extant manuscript fragment entitled ‘Theologia Rationalis.’

Intellectually, Sydenham's most striking characteristic was his independence and repudiation of all dogmatic authority in matters of science. He had indeed been trained in the school of revolt. Further, he claimed to be as little influenced by theory as by tradition. His aim was not to frame hypotheses about the operations of nature, but to observe them directly, as Bacon advised. He may be said to have set the example of studying diseases as natural objects, without being led astray by the attempt to explain them. In his own words, ‘I have been very careful to write nothing but what was the product of faithful observation, and neither suffered myself to be deceived by idle speculations, nor have deceived others by obtruding anything upon them but downright matter of fact’ (Sloane MS. 4376, letter to Gould). Furthermore, he possessed the synthetic power of genius which enabled him to combine his observations into pictures of disease, the value of which remains unaffected by change of opinion or increase of knowledge.

Sydenham was not much in sympathy with the progress of natural science in his own day, and sometimes displays remarkable ignorance of contemporary discoveries in anatomy and physiology, while he allows somewhat grudgingly the importance of anatomy in medicine. He never belonged to the Royal Society.

His chief contributions to medicine were: first, his observations on the epidemic diseases of successive years, which have been the model of many similar researches; next, that he gave the first description or clear discrimination of certain special diseases, such as chorea, hysteria, and several others; finally, in practical medicine he introduced the cooling method of treating the small-pox, which was new at all events in English practice, and he helped to bring in the use of bark in agues. By these discoveries, and by the