thomas sydenham

• • there was a rise in humanism in the Renaissance period
  • they started to believe in exploration and experimentation especially in medicine
  • humanists rejected the religious view that God was responsible for everything but could not find an alternative explanation yet
  • people returned to the texts of Galen and Hippocrates but new translations were being produced
  • more experimentation was being carried out as the Church had less authority, Galen was being proven wrong by more known in human anatomy through Vesalius
• • Sydenahm was a doctor in London
  • he wanted to challenge ideas of diagnosis of illness
  • he encouraged physicians to move away from the ideas of Galen and Hippocrates and move towards observation
• • he believed that doctors needed to observe symptoms to be able to diagnoss disease
  • he refused to rely solely on medical books
  • he did not believe that disease changed from person to person
• he encouraged:

  • observing a patient
  • recording their symptoms
  • prescribing a remedy to treat disease
• • Sydenham developed the idea of the "species" of disease which was a key development
  • identifying the exact disease was needed before recommending a cure
  • this led him to be able to identify scarlet fever and meases were different
• • Sydenham rejected the Four Humours because he believed humans had specific symptoms
  • he wrote a book called "Medical Observations" that described illness in detail
• • his work led to a more scientific approach to medicine after the Renaissance