The illustrious Boerhaave.

  • William Thompson Lusk
Date:
[1895]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The illustrious Boerhaave. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    we learn from a few but very precious memoranda left by bis famous son, a good acquaintance with Latin, Greek, and He¬ brew, and was well versed in historical studies. He was, in fact, a modest scholar, simple and unpretending, but with high ideals, and respected by all for his probity and honor. With special gratitude the son recalls the self-denying economy by which the father sought to provide the means of educating his nine living children. James Boerhaave was twice married. Hagar, the mother of Hermann, died when he was five years old. She left seven chil¬ dren. From her Hermann inherited his taste for natural sci¬ ence. At the end of a year, James married a Mrs. Dubois, a minister’s daughter. By her he had six children, but, owing to her obliging, impartial disposition, the old home sheltered an un¬ divided family. In his memoranda Hermann commemorates the “ mores sanctissimos, raram virtutem, amabilem indolem ” of this- beloved stepmother. The elder son by the second marriage, James was selected for the medical profession, but the influence of heredity was too strong. He tired of physic, and became an eminent divine at Leyden. Hermann, on the other hand, was designed for the pulpit. His maternal grandfather, Hermann Daeldir, was famous as a maker of instruments of navigation in Amsterdam. His mother was regarded as a great authority in the simple medication for the parish poor. He was brought up to regard divinity as the high¬ est of all professions, and was deeply imbued with the religious sense; but his native instincts and tastes were always for scien¬ tific investigation, and a trivial incident made him one of the greatest physicians of all times. In after life, when at the zenith of his fame, he modestly wrote a dedication of his work on chemistry to his brother; in referring to the plans laid out for them both in their boyhood he says: “ Providence disposed of us other¬ wise ; and exchanging our views, consigned you to the service of religion, and made me, whose talents were unequal to higher things, humbly contented with the profession of physic.” At eleven, under his father’s instruction, he was well versed in Latin and Greek, and ready at the grammatical rules of both tongues, for to be a good grammarian was the ambition of the countrymen of Erasmus. To write Latin with elegance and ease was essential when the Latin language was the means of communication between learned men over the entire civilized world. In those childish days it is interesting to learn that the seri¬ ous minded boy delighted in devoting his leisure hours to the culture of the little garden of the parsonage. Holland was then,.
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