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88 BRITISH PHYSICIAN?. of physic, and that whether he should read Cer- vantes or Hippocrates, he would be equally un- qualified for practice, and equally unsuccessful in it." Thus does Johnson repel the charge brought against Sydenham, of having commenced practice without previous study ; but why it should be thought necessary to deny that he exercised his profession for a maintenance, does not seem very obvious ; his father, indeed, may be allowed to have been a gentleman of plentiful estate, and yet the son require the emoluments of a gamful profession ; and who has ever practised physic, and risen to any eminence in it, who has disdained to receive the reward of his skill and diligence ? About this time, Sydenham was elected a fel- low of All Souls' College, and remained some years at Oxford, studying his profession, but he took his doctor's degree at Cambridge. On leaving the English universities, he travelled to Montpellier, at that time the most celebrated school of physic, in quest of further information, and on his return to his native country, settled in Westminster, where he soon rose to eminence as a practitioner. In 1663, on the 25th June, when he was thirty-nine years of age, he was admitted a member of the College of Physicians of London. The biography of Sydenham is remarkably barren of events, more so, perhaps, than that of any other eminent physician, and it is only by perusing his works carefully, that one is enabled to pick up a few solitary facts illustrative of his private his- tory. Of his published treatises, it has been said, that most of them were extorted from him by his friends, and several written by way of letter, to