Sydenham's fundamental idea was to take diseases as they presented themselves in nature and to draw up a complete picture ("Krankheitsbild" of the Germans) of the objective characters of each. Most forms of ill-health, he insisted, had a definite type, comparable to the types of animal and vegetable species. The conformity of type in the symptoms and course of a malady was due to the uniformity of the cause. The causes that he dwelt upon were the evident and conjunct causes, or, in other words, the morbid phenomena; the remote causes he thought it vain to seek after.