Hermann Boerhaave

Hermann Boerhaave , of his true name Boerhaaven , (December 31st 1668, Voorhout close to Leyde - September 23rd 1738, Leyde) is a botanist, doctor and humanistic Dutch.

Its life

At fourteen years, it went to Leyde to supplement its studies, and the generosity of van Alphen, burgomaster of Leyde, got the resources to him which were lacking to him. He studied with heat the Hebrew , the Chaldéen, the history, philosophy, mathematics, etc, and delivered itself exclusively to medicine only at age the twenty-two years. Boerhaave obtains in 1689 a title of doctor of philosophy at the university of Leyde. In its thesis, entitled Of distinctione lied has corpore , it criticizes the doctrines of Épicure, Thomas Hobbes and Spinoza.

Hermann Boerhaave lute all the books of medicine, followed the dissections of Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731), and learned in botany and chemistry all that one could know of his time. Receipt doctor with Harderwijk in the Gueldre in 1693, it returned in Leyde, and at the end of a few years, had to compensate the professor of medicine Charles Drelincourt (1595-1669), his former Master. At this point in time it began these famous lessons which attracted to him listeners come from all the countries.

In 1701, it enters to the Institute of medicine of Leyde. In its inaugural speech, Of commendando Hippocratis studio , it affirms to take the Greek doctor like model. In 1709, he becomes full professor of Médecine, and shortly after charged with the Botanique at the university of Leyde. It increases considerably the collections of the Botanical garden of its city (more than 2.000 species in the ten years space) and publishes many work on the description news species of plant. Thanks to the colonial expansion of its country, Boerhaave can require of expatriates, in particular among the employees of the Dutch companies of the Indies, to send exotic plants to him.

In 1714, it succeeds Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) with the pulpit of medicine clinical, which enables him to implement its ideas on a new educational system of the private clinic, more modern. Later, in 1718, it also obtains with the pulpit chemistry, which it had occupied of the remainder as substitute for fifteen years. As of this year, Boerhaave teaches the ideas of Rudolf Jakob Camerarius on the sexuality of the plants. Lastly, continuing the tradition of famous the François of Boé (1614-1672), it made open to the students a hospital where, twice per week, it made them a true private clinic.

In spite of the hygienic mode that it had been necessary, Boerhaave was reached of a complicated access of drop of paralysis in 1712; its re-entry in teaching was greeted like a public happiness, and the evening, all the city was spontaneously illuminated. New attacks, in 1727 and 1729, obliged it in 1730 to dislocate its functions. In 1728, it is elected with two year and the Academy of Science of Paris later with the Royal Society of London.

Its role in medicine and the anatomy

Hermann Boerhaave is regarded as the founder of clinical medicine and the modern academic hospital. Its fame among its contemporaries is immense: when Pierre Large the comes in the Netherlands in 1715, it attends its courses. After having recommended at its beginning the method of Hippocrates, it deviated some little by little and united with the very vitalistic philosophy of the Greek doctor of the chemical explanations and mechanics which was disputed; however, it made in chemistry, a crowd of exact observations and succeeded in breaking up the animal blood, milk and all fluids.

One classified Boerhaave among the Iatro-mechanic S; the fact is that if, in consequence of special knowledge, it made a big part with mathematics, that Giovanni Alfonso Borelli and Archibald Pitcairne at the mode, it had put was especially actually true a eclectic.

Louis Emile Beaugrand at greater length describes this classification of the diseases in the encyclopedic Dictionary of medical sciences :

See: Hermann Boerhaave/Classification of the diseases

He also plays a considerable part in the emergence of modern botany, in particular by bringing this discipline closer to the Zoologie, first step towards the creation of a common discipline: the Biology. “ the system of Boerhaave reigned longer in science than those of its two rivals of glory, F. Hoffmann and Stahl, and if professor de Leyde partly had this superiority with the tempting harmony of his doctrines, with the eloquence of his lessons, it also had it to the famous disciples left his school, with the Haller, the De Haen, with the Van Swieten, which filled the 18th century of the glory of its name. ” (Louis Emile Beaugrand). It had acquired a universal reputation; it is told that a scientist of the China having written With Mr. Boerhaave to him, in Europe , the letter reached him exactly.

Publications

Institutiones rei medicae in usus annuae exercitationis domestica (Leyde, 1708, in-8 many editions in Holland, with Paris, London, etc; French translation, by Mettrie, Rennes, 1738, in-8; Paris, 1750, in-12; etc,)
Aphorismi of cognoscendis and curandis morbis (Leyde, 1709; French translation, by Mettrie).
Index plantarum quae in horto academico Lugduno Batavo reperiuntur (Leyde, 1710, in-8; 1720, in-4; 1727, 2 volumes in-4)
Epistola of fabrica glandularurn in corpore humano, etc (Leyde, 1722, in-4, and several editions), etc
Elementa chemiae (Paris, 1724; French translation, by Mettrie).
Its pupils moreover published under his name: Methodus discendi medicinam , re-examined by Hauling, 1751
One owes him a great number of editions of old or new works, inter alia the editions of Arétée de Cappadoce, Leyde, 1731, and of the Historia insectorum of Jan Swammerdam, 1737
All its works were joined together with Venice, 1766, in-4.

Sources

encyclopedic Dictionary of medical sciences . Paris: G. Masson: P. Asselin, 1869. Under the direction of Amédée Dechambre. the 10th volume.

External bonds

Works of Boerhaave

digitized by the SICD of the universities of Strasbourg

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