He died, leaving a family, at his house in Pall-Mall, on the 29th of December, 1689, in the 66th year of his age, and was buried in the parish church of St. James, Westminster, where, in 1810, a tablet was erected to his memory by the College of Physicians, who became, as a body, tardily but fully convinced of his extraordinary merit and eminent claims to the gratitude and respect of his profession. He is said to have been a man of the most retiring and unobtrusive disposition, and the utmost placidity of temper. In a biographical sketch by Dr. Samuel Johnson, prefixed to an English edition of his works by Swan, in 1742, it is remarked, that if he could not teach us in his writings how to cure the painful disorders from which he suffered, he has taught us by his example the nobler art to bear them with serenity. Nor was he less patient of mental than of bodily inflictions; for though he was the object of much asperity among the physicians of his time, he made no reprisals upon the reputations of those who slandered him: though he often speaks of their bitterness, he never even mentions their names,—a forbearance to which, as his biographer pungently remarks, they are indebted for their escape from a discreditable immortality. His writings breathe throughout a spirit of warm piety, candour, and benevolence: he is said to have been extremely generous in his dealings with his patients; for which, with other reasons, his practice though large was not very gainful, and he did not leave much wealth behind him. He never was sought after by the great, like his successor and disciple Radcliffe; and had none of the talents by which that singular man was able to push his fortune and establish a kind of professional despotism. Yet, whatever medical skill the latter evinced seems to have been derived from Sydenham, whose doctrines and treatment he contrived to bring into a much more early and general repute in England than they would probably have otherwise obtained. Each had his reward: the one will be long remembered as the founder of a magnificent library; the other can never be forgotten as the author of modern medicine.