Sydenham - Opera Medica - 1757

[MEDICINE, Fever, Smallpox, Gout, Arthritis]

Thomas Sydenham – Thomae Sydenham, medical doctor and renowned London practitioner, Opera medica, divided into two volumes. Newest edition. 2 volumes (complete). Geneva, by the Brothers de Tournes, 1757.

Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689) is regarded as a co-founder of clinical medicine and epidemiology; because of his precise patient observations and careful records he was lauded as "the English Hippocrates." In an era when medicine was shaped by theory and systematics, he relied on observation and direct bedside experience. The present Opera medica, spread over two volumes, gather Sydenham's main writings in Latin: the Observationes Medicae, his treatises on fever, smallpox, gout, and other diseases, as well as his Historia Epidemica, documenting the epidemics of the 16th and 17th centuries. Also included are two dissertations by William Musgrave on symptomatic and anomalous arthritis, which expand the work with an important rheumatologic appendix. The edition appeared from the renowned Geneva publishing house Fratres de Tournes, which has issued Sydenham's Opera medica in this form since 1716 on several occasions; the present 1757 edition is the last and most carefully edited in this series.

23x18 cm. 711 + 496 + 88 + 168 pp. Lightly rubbed full-leather bindings of the period with light brown spine labels; floral embossings on the back. Internally in very good condition.