The great physician has nowhere described his own character more clearly than in the following passage: “In all points of theory where the reader finds me in error, I ask his pardon. In all points of practice I state that I speak nothing but the truth; and that I have propounded nothing except what I have properly tried. Verily, I am sure that, when the last day of my life shall have come upon me, I shall carry in my heart a willing witness that shall speak, not only to the care and honesty with which I have laboured for the health of both rich and poor who have intrusted themselves to my care, but also to those efforts which I have made to the best of my power, and with all the energies of my mind, to give certainty to the treatment of diseases even after my death, if such may be. In the first place, no patient has been treated by me otherwise than I would myself wish to be treated under the same complaint. In the second, I have ever held that any accession whatever to the art of healing, even if it went no further than the cutting of corns or the curing of toothaches, was of far higher value than all the knowledge of fine points, and all the pomp of subtle speculations—matters which are as useful to physicians in driving away diseases, as music is to masons in laying bricks.” The last comparison leads us to note that a vein of humour runs through Sydenham’s works, as when he quotes “Tua res agitur paries quum proximus ardet,” as a reason for his leaving London in the height of the plague. In another passage, he is referring to the want of opportunity of the poor to injure themselves by unsuitable diet in smallpox, owing to the “res augusta domi.” Yet even among the poor, he says, since they learnt the use of certain cordials, many more have died than in previous ages less learned but more wise. “Nowadays every house has its old woman,” he says, “a practitioner in an art she never learnt, to the killing of mankind.” In one place he grimly remarks, that if a certain mode of treatment be resorted to, the patient will die of his own doctor, an end which in that age must have too frequently resulted, though not specified in the catalogue of diseases. Here is a specimen of Sydenham’s witty apophthegms: “A man who finds a treasure lying on the ground before him, is a fool if he do not stoop and pick it up; but he is a greater one who, on the strength of such a single piece of luck, wastes labour and risks life for the chance of another.” Again, “The usual pomp of medicine exhibited over dying patients is like the garlands of a beast at the sacrifice.” Elsewhere he refers to some persons “to whom nature has given just wit enough to traduce her with.” We must also refer to Sydenham’s humour his answer to Sir Richard Blackmore, who asked him what books he should study medicine in: “Read Don Quixote, sir, which is a very good book: I read it still.”