Thomas Sydenham

“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.”

“It is my nature to thin where others read.”

“They love without measure those whom they will soon hate without reason.”

“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.”

“I watched what method Nature might take, with intention of subduing the symptom by treading in her footsteps.”

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

“A man is as old as his arteries.”

“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.”

“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.”

“...that the doctor being himself a mortal man, should be diligent and tender in relieving his suffering patients, inasmuch as he himself must one day be a like sufferer.”

“Lastly, he must remember that he himself hath no exemption from the common lot, but that he is bound by the same laws of mortality, and liable to the same ailments and afflictions with his fellows.”

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

“Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.”

“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.”

“Nothing in medicine is so insignificant as to merit attention.”

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

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