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- Title
The Creation of the English Hippocrates.
- Authors
ANSTEY, PETER
- Abstract
This article examines the process by which the London physician Thomas Sydenham (1624-89) rose to fame as the English Hippocrates in the late seventeenth century. It provides a survey of the evidence for the establishment of Sydenham's reputation from his own writings, his professional relations, and the writings of his supporters and detractors. These sources reveal that in the first decades of his career Sydenham had few supporters and faced much opposition. However, by the end of the seventeenth century, Sydenham was the object of extraordinary outbursts of adulation and had become renowned for his decrying of hypotheses and speculative theory, his promotion of natural histories of disease, and the purported similarities between his medical method and that of Hippocrates. It is argued that Sydenham's positive reputation owed little to his achievements in medicine: it was almost entirely the result of his promotion by the philosopher John Locke and a small group of sympathetic physicians. It was they who created the English Hippocrates.
- Subjects
UNITED Kingdom; SYDENHAM, Thomas, 1624-1689; PHYSICIANS; 17TH century medical history; ETIOLOGY of diseases; REPUTATION; BIOGRAPHY (Literary form); SEVENTEENTH century; INTELLECTUAL life
- Publication
Medical History, 2011, Vol 55, Issue 4, p457
- ISSN
0025-7273
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S0025727300004944