Hermann Boerhaave
1668-1738
Dutch Physician and Chemist
The Dutch physician and professor of medicine Hermann Boerhaave was widely knownand revered for his exemplary role in teaching clinical, or "bedside," medicine. Although Boerhaave is not associated with any major discoveries in medicine or chemistry, his reputation as a teacher and writer was so great that his contemporaries considered him comparable to Sir Isaac Newton. He was considered the greatest clinical teacher of his time and the most eminent of European physicians.
Boerhaave, the son of a minister, was born in Verhout, Holland. He was expected to follow in his father's profession, but he became fascinated by chemistry and decided on a career in medicine. In 1684 he became a student at the University of Leiden and took courses in chemistry, botany, medicine, philosophy, languages, and philosophy. He graduated in natural philosophy in 1687. After qualifying in medicine at the University of Harderwijk in 1693, he returned to Leiden, where he began taking private pupils and teaching medicine and chemistry. He was offered a professorship at the University of Groningen in 1703 but declined it so that he could wait for an appointment to the University of Leiden. In 1709 he was appointed to the chair of medicine and botany at the University of Leiden. Boerhaave dedicated the rest of his professional life to the University of Leiden. In addition to serving as professor of chemistry, botany, medicine, and clinical medicine, he was also rector of the university.
Founded in 1575 by William of Orange, the University of Leiden was, by the seventeenth century, highly respected as a center of learning in theology, science, and medicine. During the eighteenth century, thanks largely to Boerhaave, the University of Leiden also achieved distinction in the study of medicine. Students came from all parts of Europe to the University of Leiden in order to hear Boerhaave's lectures. His students carried word of Boerhaave's brilliant lectures to their own medical communities. Many of his best pupils became teachers at prestigious medical schools, where they exerted a profound influence on the teaching of medicine. Boerhaave is generally credited with establishing the system of teaching medical students at the bedside of the patient. Boerhaave also published medical textbooks that were widely used long after his death.
Boerhaave's major works were Medical Principles (1708), Aphorisms on the Recognition and Treatment of Diseases (1709), Index plantarum (1710), and Elements of Chemistry (1734). Some of his lectures were published in unauthorized versions by his students, including Historia plantarum and one version of Principles and Experiments in Chemistry. Boerhaave explicitly repudiated the latter text. His own Elements of Chemistry was considered one of the most learned works on chemistry ever published. It was translated into many languages and remained in use for almost 100 years.
Physicians throughout the world were guided by Boerhaave's teachings and his published aphorisms. (Aphorisms are concise or pithy expressions of doctrines or generally accepted truths.) Since the time of Hippocrates, aphorisms dealing with the symptoms, diagnosis, and prognosis of diseases had been used as guides to students and physicians. Boerhaave's collection of medical aphorisms provides a valuable summary of essentially all the medical knowledge available at the time.
With his colleague Bernard Siegfied Albinus (1697-1770), Boerhaave also edited the writings of Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) and William Harvey (1578-1657). Albinus was the first anatomist to demonstrate the connection between the vascular systems of the mother and the fetus. He had been appointed to the chair of anatomy, surgery, and medicine at Leiden in 1721.
As both a teacher and a writer, Boerhaave was respected for his ability to systematize and convey to his students and readers all the useful medical information that was available at the time. Boerhaave was so famous that a letter bearing only the address "To the Greatest Physician in the World" was delivered to him.
This is the complete article, containing 632 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
