eacher of medicine at Montpellier. His creed was in the way of
his obtaining office; but the young men followed his instructions with
enthusiasm. Religious and scientific freedom breed in and in, until it
becomes hard to tell the family of one from that of the other. Barbeyrac
threw overboard the old complex medical farragos of the pharmacopoeias,
as his church had disburdened itself of the popish ceremonies.

Among the students who followed his instructions were two Englishmen:
one of them, John Locke, afterwards author of an "Essay on the Human
Understanding," three years younger than his teacher; the other, Thomas
Sydenham, five years older. Both returned to England. Locke, whose
medical knowledge is borne witness to by Sydenham, had the good
fortune to form a correct opinion on a disease 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 wi