The works of Thomas Sydenham, M. D., on acute and chronic diseases : with their histories and modes of cure / with notes, intended to accommodate them to the present state of medicine, and to the climate and diseases of the United States, by Benjamin Rush.

  • Sydenham, Thomas, 1624-1689.
Date:
1809
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The works of Thomas Sydenham, M. D., on acute and chronic diseases : with their histories and modes of cure / with notes, intended to accommodate them to the present state of medicine, and to the climate and diseases of the United States, by Benjamin Rush. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    349/530
    TREATISE OF THE GOUT AND DROPSY. THE DEDICATORY EPISTLE OF THE AUTHOR, TO DR. THOMAS SHORT, FELLOW OF THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS. WORTHY SIR, I PRESENT you here with a short treatise of the gout and dropsy, instead of a larger work, which I had thoughts of writ- ing, namely, the history of those chronic distempers especially, which I have often met with in my practice. But as my immo- derate application to this work occasioned the severest fit of the gout I ever had, it was a caution to me to desist from my under- taking, though with reluctance, consult my health, and rest satis- fied with having finished my essay on these two diseases; for the gout constantly returned, as oft as I attempted to go on with the fcftvork. I Be pleased, therefore, to accept this performance with all its I faults, which is addressed to you for two reasons chiefly: First, because you have readily acknowledged and asserted the useful- ness of the observations I formerly published, (which some per- sons contemn) both before me and others ; and, secondjy, because in the mutual intercourse we have had in consultations, I have found j»ur genius well adapted to the practice of physic. For though you excel in all kinds of literature, yet nature has rather intended you for a judicious practitioner, than an idle theorist; practice and speculation differing as much from each other, as tri- fles and matters of the greatest importance; so that if my ob- servation be right, they seldom meet in one and. the same person. Rr