Sydenham: Thomas

Sydenham, T. (1848) The Entire Works of Thomas Sydenham, Yoh. 1-2. London Sydenham Society. 

As Europe began its slow emergence from the Dark Ages in the sixteenth century, opium began to reappear in medical journals on the continent. A century later, an English apothecary named Thomas Sydenham introduced Sydenham s Laudanum, pills made from opium, sherry, and herbs. They were popular remedies for a variety of ills. 

Opium eating was the phrase generally used throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century that actually referred to laudanum drinking. Laudanum (from the Latin, something to be praised ) of this period often contained 2 ounces of strained opium, 1 ounce of saffron, and a dram of cinnamon and cloves dissolved in 1 pint of Canary wine and was the recipe of a seventeenth-century English physician, Thomas Sydenham. A dose of this concoction produced a panacea... for all human woes,... equipoise to all the faculties and could be ordered by mail from Sears, Roebuck, for 4 a pint. It has been estimated that no less than 1 percent of the population was addicted to opium at the time. 

Thomas Sydenham, 17th-century pioneer of English medicine... 

Haas LF (1996) Thomas Sydenham (1624-89). J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 61 465 Kendall RE (1975) The role of diagnosis in psychiatry. Blackwell Scientific Publication, Oxford, Philadelphia, PA (distributed by J. B. Lippincott)... 

Cunningham, A. (1989). Thomas Sydenham Epidemics, Experiment, and the Good Old Cause . In R. French A. Wear (Eds.), The Medical Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (pp. 164-190). Cambridge. 

Occasional historical references to what we now call menopause and therapy for the condition can be found, such as the reference to hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms in the 1628 book. The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton. A 1675 account described a cooling diet for menopause. In 1701, physician Thomas Sydenham described the tendency of women ages 45-50 to develop hysterick fits, and suggested blood letting as therapy. 

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 (Thomas Sydenham, physician, 1680). 

Thomas Sydenham, 1624-89. He was referred to as the English Hippocrates due to his dassic description of diseases. 

But among several success that deserve to be mentioned, one oft neglected is that several discoveries of herbal remedies in the Enlightenment perpetuated the above mentioned useful doctrine of simples developed by Thomas Sydenham. Notably, the Reverent Edmund Stone (1702-1768) announced that willow bark (containing aspirin) was a febrifuge (fever remedy). These simple factors or simples went under study for repeated purification and extraction. Purer extracts of simples and other prominent biological contents such as the molecules of albumin of eggs were to become the objects of scrutiny in the nineteenth century and the first medicinal chemistry, and the basis of molecular medicine in the midtwentieth century. 

The important concept that was needed, but missing to establish the rational molecular basis of modern and future medicine, was the concept of the magic bullet. Its basis was already being developed during the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The concept had been glimpsed by Thomas Sydenham and others, who noted that each disease seemed to require a specific plant extract factor but had no concept of a specific molecular target in the body, for molecules in that extract. 

The use of opium in various medicines became an essential part of medical practice. In the 17th century the great English physician Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689) wrote ... 

In 1676, the British physician Thomas Sydenham published Observationes Medicae as a standard textbook for two centuries noted for its detailed observations and the accuracy of its records. His treatise on gout (1683) is considered his masterpiece. Sydenham was among the first to use iron to treat iron-deficiency anaemia and used laudanum (a solution of opium in alcohol) as a medication, and helped popularize the use of quinquina for malaria. 

K. Dewhurst. Dr Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689) his life and original writings. University of California Press,... 

Early in the sixteenth century, a Swiss-born doctor usually known as Paracelsus popularized an extract of opium in brandy, which was known as laudanum. A century and a half later, the Oxford-educated doctor Thomas Sydenham promoted laudanum as a general cure-all. It became very popular in the eighteenth century, not least because it was half the price of beer, as well as being a treatment for cholera and dysentery. And it was safer than drinking the water in many places, which made it a boon to the poor. 

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