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The Creation of the English Hippocrates

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, an...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Anstey, Peter
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Medical History 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3199640/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22025796
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author Anstey, Peter
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description 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.
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spelling pubmed-31996402011-10-24 The Creation of the English Hippocrates Anstey, Peter Med Hist Articles 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. Medical History 2011-10 /pmc/articles/PMC3199640/ /pubmed/22025796 Text en Copyright © Peter Anstey, 2011.
spellingShingle Articles
Anstey, Peter
The Creation of the English Hippocrates
title The Creation of the English Hippocrates
title_full The Creation of the English Hippocrates
title_fullStr The Creation of the English Hippocrates
title_full_unstemmed The Creation of the English Hippocrates
title_short The Creation of the English Hippocrates
title_sort creation of the english hippocrates
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3199640/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22025796
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