In the front rank of practical physicians in England stands THOMAS SYDENHAM, descended from an ancient Somersetshire family, one branch of which migrated into Dorsetshire in the reign of Henry VIII., and settled at Winford Eagle. Here he was born in 1624. We know nothing of his early years till we find him entered at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in 1642. His studies were interrupted by Charles I.’s residence there, and it is very probable that he took arms on the side of the Parliament, while it is certain that his brothers did so—one of them, William Sydenham, having been a well-known Parliamentarian commissioner, and Governor of the Isle of Wight. His mother, too, was in some way, of which we have no account, “killed in the civil wars” in 1644, so that there is sufficient reason why Thomas Sydenham should have withdrawn from Oxford at this time. Sir Richard Blackmore indeed describes him as a disbanded officer, and this appears possible from what Sydenham himself states. In his letter dedicatory to Dr. John Mapletoft of the third edition of his “Medical Observations,” Sydenham says: “It is now thirty years since I had the good fortune to fall in with the learned and ingenuous Master Thomas Coxe, Doctor.... I myself was on my way to London, with the intention of going thence to Oxford, the breaking out of the war having kept me away for some years. With his well-known kindness and condescension, Dr. Coxe asked me what pursuit I was prepared to make my profession.... Upon this point my mind was unfixed, whilst I had not so much as dreamed of medicine. Stimulated, however, by the recommendation and encouragement of so high an authority, I prepared myself seriously for that pursuit. Hence all the little merit that my works may have earned in the eyes of the public is to be thankfully referred to him who was the patron and promoter of my first endeavours.” Dr. Lettsom in 1801 communicated to the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ a MS. anecdote which has since been found to be derived from “The Vindicatory Schedule,” by Dr. Andrew Brown, published two years after Sydenham’s death. “Dr. Thos. Sydenham was an actor in the late civil war, and discharged the office of captain. He being in his lodgings in London, and going to bed at night with his clothes loosed, a mad drunken fellow, a soldier, likewise in the same lodging, entered his room, with one hand gripping him by the breast of his shirt, with the other discharged a loaded pistol into his bosom; yet, oh strange! without any hurt to him.” The story then goes on to relate how the bullet happened to be discharged in the line of all the bones of the palm of the hand edgeways, so that it lost its force and was spent without doing any harm to Sydenham.