Sir Thomas Sydenham [1624-89]
Smallpox
"I don't think there's been any
major shift in the medical profession's general approach to new ideas. I don't
think there ever will be that kind of wholesale change. Three hundred years ago,
when the major disease was smallpox, Sir Thomas Sydenham [1624-89] developed a
new treatment that reduced the death rate from about 50 percent to 1 percent or
2 percent. His reward was being challenged to a duel. The English medical
association wanted to drive him out. He wrote: "A new idea is like a sapling in
the middle of a road, and if it's not fenced in, it will be galloped over by the
trampling hordes." That's a really great statement, and it's also my view of
what happens to medical discovery."
-----Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD
1997
Interview by Peter Barry Chowka.
'Disease is nothing else but an attempt on the part of the body to rid itself
of morbific matter.' — Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689)
The famous Dr. Sydenham, of England, called smallpox ‘the
most safe and slight of all diseases as long as no mischief be done by either
physician or nurse’, which is significant indeed. In olden days people died not
of smallpox but of the treatment that was given to them.
Dangers
of smallpox
Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D. ,
Abram
Disease
Protection Racket Dangers
of smallpox
