Thomas Sydenham

Thomas Sydenham
A 1689 portrait of Sydenham by Mary Beale
Born(1624-09-10)10 September 1624
Wynford Eagle, Dorset, England
Died29 December 1689(1689-12-29) (aged 65)
NationalityEnglish
Alma materAll Souls College, Oxford (MB, 1648)
Pembroke College, Cambridge (MD, 1676)
Known forClinical medicine
Scientific career
FieldsMedicine

Thomas Sydenham (10 September 1624 – 29 December 1689) was an English physician. He was the author of Observationes Medicae (1676) which became a standard textbook of medicine for two centuries so that he became known as 'The English Hippocrates'. Among his many achievements was the discovery of a disease, Sydenham's chorea, also known as St Vitus' Dance. To him is attributed the prescient dictum, "A man is as old as his arteries."[1]

  1. ^ Weber T, Mayer CC (November 2020). ""Man Is as Old as His Arteries" Taken Literally: In Search of the Best Metric". Hypertension. 76 (5): 1425–1427. doi:10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.120.16128. PMID 33026913.