THE ILLUSTRIOUS BOERHAAVE. in 



" 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 com- 

 munication 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, 

 Griffin tells us, 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 the boy 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 



