ase from which the Earl of Shaftesbury
was suffering, which led to an operation that saved his life. Less
felicitous was his experience with a certain ancilla culinaria
virgo,--which I am afraid would in those days have been translated
kitchen-wench, instead of lady of the culinary department,--who turned
him off after she had got tired of him, and called in another
practitioner. [Locke and Sydenham, p. 124. By John Brown, M. D.
Edinburgh, 1866.] This helped, perhaps, to spoil a promising doctor, and
make an immortal metaphysician. At any rate, Locke laid down the
professional wig and cane, and took to other studies.

The name of Thomas Sydenham is as distinguished in the history of
medicine as that of John Locke in philosophy. As Barbeyrac was found in
opposition to the established religion, as Locke took the rational side
against orthodox Bishop Stillingfleet, so Sydenham went with Parliament
against Charles, and was never admitted a Fellow by the College of
Physicians, which, after he was dead, placed his bust in their hall by
the side of that of Harvey.

What Sydenham did for medicine was briefly this he studied the course of
diseases carefully, and especially as affected by the particular season;
to patients with fever he gave air and cooling drinks, instead of
smothering and heating them, with the idea of sweating out their disease;
he ordered horseback exercise to consumptives; he, like his teacher, used
few and comparatively simple remedies; he did not give any drug at all,
if he thought none was needed, but let well enough alone. He was a
sensible man, in short, who applied his common sense to diseases which he
had studied with the best light of science that he could obtain.

The influence of the reform he introduced must have been more or less
felt in this country, but not much before the beginning of the eighteenth
century, as his great work was not published until 1675, and then in
Latin. I very strongly suspect that there was not so much to reform in
the simple practice of the physicians of the new community, as there was
in that of the learned big-wigs of the "College," who valued their
remedies too much in proportion to their complexity, and the extravagant
and fantastic ingredients which went to their making.

During the memorable century which bred and bore the Revolution, the
medical profession gave great names to our history. But John Brooks
belonged to the State, and Joseph Warren belongs to the c