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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    Griffin tells ns, the gayest garden land of Europe, and later, under the skilled direction of Boerhaave, the botanical garden of Leyden became the most renowned in the world. From the twelfth to the seventeenth year tne hoy suffered greatly from hip disease. He tells us it was the grievous pain from this source which led him to contemplate the study of medi¬ cine. But the malady seems scarcely to have affected his prog¬ ress in his studies. At fourteen he was sent to the public school in Leyden, where he was rapidly advanced in his studies, winning all the prizes, and at sixteen, he was admitted to the university. It may here be parenthetically stated that the schools of Holland were the best in the world. They received state aid, and were free to the needy student. Meantime the father of Boerhaave had died, and left his family in straitened circumstances ; but, in Leyden, where, after its heroic siege, while the memory of plague and famine was still fresh upon them, its people had asked for a university in place of the proffered exemption from taxation; in Leyden, which, when Scaliger was invited to a professorship, had ordered a ship of war to receive him, a helping hand was always outstretched to aid the meritorious student. Trigland, one of the divinity professors of the university, who had been a friend of Boer- haave's father, and who entertained great expectations as to the boy's future, procured for him the patronage of Van Alphen, the burgomaster, to whose paternal, continuous, and benevolent in¬ terest Boerhaave renders grateful tribute. While a student at the university, by the advice of his in¬ structors, in addition to studies in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Chaldee he attended lectures on natural philosophy and mathe¬ matics. During his undergraduate course he was often called upon by Siguerd, his professor, to take part in discussions upon the latter subjects. The study of algebra, geometry, and trigo¬ nometry he tells us he found most entertaining. In his twenty- first year he delivered the academic oration upon the subject that “ the Doctrine of Epicurus concerning the Chief Good was well understood by Cicero, for which he received the gold medal. It may perhaps be of interest to recall at this time the digni¬ fied formalities with which the competition for university honors was then surrounded.* The candidate first announced his inten¬ tions to the rector and senators, and these in turn informed the curators, who appointed the day for the oration. Then the appli¬ cant waited on each of the curators, and on the chief magistrate and sheriff of the city, to desire their presence. If the oration * Burton’s Life and Writings of Boerhaave, 1746, p. 9.
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