Note 293 — MONDAY, AUGUST 23.
Reading edition
Malone records:—'I could not find from Mr. Walpole that his father [Sir Robert] read any other book but Sydenham in his retirement.' To his admiration of Sydenham his death was attributed; for it led him to treat himself wrongly when he was suffering from the stone. Prior's Malone, p. 387. Johnson wrote a Life of Sydenham. In it he ridicules the notion that 'a man eminent for integrity practised Medicine by chance, and grew wise only by murder.' Works, vi. 409.