When Oxford surrendered to the Parliament, Sydenham returned to Magdalen Hall, and was soon afterwards elected a fellow of All Souls’ in place of an expelled Royalist. The degree of M.B. he took in 1648, without taking a degree in arts; and he appears to have resided at Oxford for some years, with possibly an interval spent at the Montpellier School of Medicine. Soon after taking his degree he began to suffer from gout and symptoms of stone, to which he was a martyr more or less for the rest of his life. We do not know in what year Sydenham finally quitted Oxford and went to London. He gives an account of the epidemics of 1661 in London, where he must then have been settled. In 1663 he became a licentiate of the College of Physicians, but could not proceed further without a doctor’s degree, which he did not take till comparatively late in life, in 1676. In 1666 appeared Sydenham’s first work, the first edition of the “Method of Curing Fevers,” dealing with continued and intermittent fevers, and with smallpox. This first edition was dedicated to Robert Boyle, whom Sydenham describes as “truly and wholly noble,” and to whom he ascribes transcendent parts, such as to raise him to the level of the most famous names of foregone ages. He acknowledges many and great favours conferred upon him by his friend; and he states soberly that it was on Boyle’s persuasion and recommendation that he undertook to write the book, and by his experience that some portions of it had been tested. Boyle occasionally accompanied Sydenham in his visits to the sick. The physician hopes his book will not find less favour for being “neither vast in bulk, nor stuffed out with the spoils of former authors.” “I have no wish to disturb their ashes,” he remarks. The preface to the first edition begins thus: “Whoever takes up medicine should seriously consider the following points: firstly, that he must one day render to the Supreme Judge an account of the lives of those sick men who have been intrusted to his care. Secondly, that such skill and science as, by the blessing of God, he has attained, are to be specially directed towards the honour of his Maker and the welfare of his fellow-creatures, since it is a base thing for the great gifts of heaven to become the servants of avarice or ambition. Thirdly, he must remember that it is no mean ignoble animal that he deals with. We may ascertain the worth of the human race, since for its sake God’s only-begotten Son became man, and thereby ennobled the nature that He took upon Him. Lastly, he must remember that he himself hath no exemption from the common lot, but that he is bound by the same laws of mortality, and liable to the same ailments and afflictions with his fellows. For these and like reasons let him strive to render aid to the distressed with the greater care, with the kindlier spirit, and with the stronger fellow-feeling.”