Thomas Sydenham - Thomae Sydenham Opera Medica - 1749

Th. Sydenham: Medical Work divided into two volumes... The edition is far more emaciated than all preceding ones, and richer with new additions. Indeed, a most ample alphabetical index replaces the list of things, most usefully adorned. Geneva: at the Frères De Tournes, 1749. The work is complete in the two volumes, the second also includes Guilhelmi Musgrave... De arthritide symptomatica dissertation + Guilhelmi Musgrave... De arthritide anomala, sive interna, dissertation: each with its own frontispiece. Pp. (12), 711, (1); 849, 496, (8), 88; (89), 168; cm. 23 x 18.5. Important work by the English physician Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689), whose copper-engraved portrait by G. Seller is in the frontispiece of the first volume. He is defined as the “English Hippocrates” for having rejected speculative medical theory and for directing his attention to shaping the empirical medicine of the time, arguing that a physician’s attention should be principally aimed at experience to study well the symptoms and natural course of disease. The two volumes are solid and compact: they show wear and flaws to the bindings corresponding to the period and in full leather; the first volume has the board detached and a missing title-tassel (as in the photograph); foxing, though not heavy.