Page:Lives of British Physicians.djvu/128

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110 BRITISH PHYSICIANS. The treatise from which this extract is made, was the last published in his lifetime, and he con- cludes it, by observing, that he has now given to the world the sum of all which he had hitherto known concerning the cure of diseases, up to the day on which he wrote it, viz., to the 29th of September, 1686. His work, entitled Processus Iiitegri, the compendious result of all his practical experience, was published after his death, and has been generally considered to have settled the question, as to whether he wrote his treatises in English, and procured them afterwards to be trans- lated into Latin. This posthumous work exhibits so much classical learning, that Dr. Johnson (no mean judge in these matters) pronounces Syden- ham to have been well versed in the writings of antiquity, more particularly in those of the great Roman orator and philosopher, whose luxuriance of style he appears to have endeavoured to imitate. The gout and the stone were distempers which even the art of Sydenham could only palliate, without hope of a cure ; but if he has not been able, by his precepts, to instruct us how to remove them, he has at least left us his example how to bear them ; he never betrayed any indecent impa- tience or unmanly dejection under his torments — on the contrary, supported himself by the re- flections of philosophy and the consolations of religion ; and in every interval of ease applied himself to the assistance of others with his usual assiduity. After a life thus usefully employed, he died at his house, in Pall Mall, on the 29th of December, 1689, and was buried in the aisle^ near the south