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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    gave satisfaction to the curators, their secretary was sent to his habitation to thank him in their name, and to acquaint him that he should be presented with the gold medal. This was worth thirteen pounds, and bore a Pallas in relief on the front, and an engraved inscription relating the name of the person and the occasion on the reverse. The University of Leyden,” Thorold Rogers tells us, was far more renowned in the seventeenth century than Oxford, Cam¬ bridge, or Paris, and students from all countries crowded into this the youngest of the great universities. The student was exempted from taxation; he received his wine, beer, tea, coffee, salt, soup, and books free; and when once his name had been on the university rolls he was amenable for all offenses to a special court composed of the rector, four professors, and a representa¬ tion in the city magistracy. One of the gravest punishments with which he could be visited, in the popular apprehension, was banishment from town for a term of years, and deprivation of academic privileges. After receiving his philosophical degree, Boerhaave entered upon his theological studies. He delighted, he tells us, in the primitive fathers, whom he highly reverenced for the purity and simplicity of their doctrine, for the sanctity of their instruction, and for the perfection of their lives, dedicated to God; but he had no patience with the efforts of the schoolmen to make the sacred writings conform to the metaphysical abstractions of Plato, Aris¬ totle, Aquinas, Scotus, and Descartes, with the confusion ensu¬ ing, and with an outcome, as he regarded it, contrary to peace with God and man. Independent judgment, it may be stated, was not favorably regarded in those days by the orthodox in Holland. Meantime, to aid in his support, Boerhaave received a small number of pupils for private instruction, and, contemporaneously with his religious exercises, he took up the study of anatomy as a diversion. To him the works of Vesalius, of Fallopius, and of Bartholin were of absorbing interest. He attended likewise the dissections of Prof. Ruck, and with the true scientific spirit, eager for personal observation, he frequented slaughterhouses, and sought to increase his knowledge by vivisections. Anatomy was then to the student a revelation, and not a compulsory task. Chemistry, too, with the hopes it inspired of new and wonderful discoveries, filled him with splendid dreams. Thus it came to pass that while loyal to his father’s wish that he should devote his life to the ministry, and though still believ¬ ing that his duty lay in that direction, he decided that he would, in addition to his theological studies, take a degree in medicine. For that purpose he entered the University of Harder wick, and