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Thomas Sydenham (10 September 1624 – 29 December 1689) was an English physician. He was the author of ''Observationes Medicae'' which became a standard textbook of medicine for two centuries so that he became known as 'The English Hippocrates’. Among his many achievements was the discovery of a disease, Sydenham's Chorea, also known as St Vitus Dance. ==Education== Thomas Sydenham was born at Wynford Eagle in Dorset, where his father was a gentleman of property. His brother was Colonel William Sydenham. At the age of eighteen Sydenham was entered at Magdalen Hall, Oxford; after a short period his college studies appear to have been interrupted, and he served for a time as an officer in the Parliamentarian army during the Civil War. He completed his Oxford course in 1648, graduating as bachelor of medicine, and about the same time he was elected a fellow of All Souls College. It was not until nearly thirty years later (1676) that he graduated as M.D., not at Oxford, but at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where his eldest son was by then an undergraduate. After 1648 he seems to have spent some time studying medicine at Oxford, but he was soon back in military service, and in 1654 he received the sum of £600, as a result of a petition he addressed to Oliver Cromwell, pointing out the various arrears due to two of his brothers who had been killed and reminding Cromwell that he himself had also faithfully served the parliament with the loss of much blood. In 1655 he resigned his fellowship at All Souls and married Mary Gee in his home town of Wynford Eagle. They had two sons, William (c.1660–1738) and Henry (1668?–1741); another son, James, apparently died young. In 1663 he passed the examinations of the College of Physicians for their licence to practice in Westminster and 6 miles round; but it is probable that he had been settled in London for some time before that. This minimum qualification to practice was the single bond between Sydenham and the College of Physicians throughout the whole of his career. He seems to have been distrusted by some members of the faculty because he was an innovator and something of a plain-dealer. In a letter to John Mapletoft he refers to a class of detractors "qui vitio statim vertunt si quis novi aliquid, ab illis non prius dictum vel etiam inauditum, in medium proferat" ("Who by a technicality suddenly turn if something is new, if someone should disclose something not previously said or heard"); and in a letter to Robert Boyle, written the year before his death (and the only authentic specimen of his English composition that remains), he says, "I have the happiness of curing my patients, at least of having it said concerning me that few miscarry under me; but () cannot brag of my correspondency with some other of my faculty .... Though yet, in taken fire at my attempts to reduce practice to a greater easiness, plainness, and in the meantime letting the mountebank at Charing Cross pass unrailed at, they contradict themselves, and would make the world believe I may prove more considerable than they would have me." Sydenham attracted to his support some of the most discriminating men of his time, such as Boyle and John Locke. His religious views have been described as an early form of natural theology. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Thomas Sydenham」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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