Thomas Sydenham Quotes

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.

Read Don Quixote; it is a very good book; I still read it frequently.

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.

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.

For humble individuals like myself, there is one poor comfort, which is this, viz. that gout, unlike any other disease, kills more rich men than poor, more wise men than simple.

A man is as old as his arteries.

The arrival of a good clown exercises a more beneficial influence upon the health of a town than twenty asses laden with drugs.

The arrival of a good clown exercises a more beneficial influence upon the health of a town than of twenty asses laden with drugs.

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.

It is my nature to thin where others read.

The art of medicine was to be properly learned only from its practice and its exercise.

As no man can say who it was that first invented the use of clothes and houses against the inclemency of the weather, so also can no investigator point out the origin of Medicine – mysterious as the source of the Nile.

We are overwhelmed as it is, with an infinite abundance of vaunted medicaments, and here they add another one.

The generality have considered that disease is but a confused and disordered effort in Nature, thrown down from her proper state, and defending herself in vain.

Acute [diseases] meaning those of which God is the author, chronic meaning those that originate in ourselves.