Abstract
HERMAN BOERHAAVE, eminent alike as physician, chemist and botanist, was born at Voorhuit, a village near Leyden, on December 31,1668. He first intended to become a clergyman, like his father, and after studying philosophy, theology and mathematics, qualified as a doctor of philosophy at Leyden in 1690 with a thesis on the distinction between the mind and the body. He then took up medicine, in which he qualified in 1693 with a dissertation on the importance of examining the excreta in disease. In 1702 he was appointed lecturer in the institute of medicine, his inaugural address being devoted to the importance of the study of Hippocrates. In 1709 he was made professor of botany and medicine, and five years later succeeded Bidloo in the chair of practical medicine, becoming in the same year rector of the University of Leyden. In 1718 he became professor of chemistry, on which subject he published several works, the most notable being “Elementa chemise” (1724), regarded by Garrison as the best work on chemistry in the eighteenth century. His other principal works are “Institutiones medicse” (1708) and “Aphorismi de cognoscendis et curandis morbis” (1709). Moreover, in conjunction with Albinus, the greatest contemporary anatomist, he edited the collected works of Vesalius. In addition to Peter the Great, he counted among his pupils such eminent physicians as Haller, Pringle, Cullen, De Haen and van Swieten, the last of whom published a commentary on the Aphorisms. Boerhaave enjoyed a world-wide reputation, and many of his works were translated into different languages including Turkish and Chinese. His many honours included that of fellowship of the Royal Society and membership of the Academy of Sciences of France. His death took place on September 23, 1738.
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Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738). Nature 142, 504 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142504b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142504b0