THE ILLUSTRIOUS BOERHAAVE. 117 



men" in those days who received the work with scant favor. 

 They boasted that they read nothing ; that all available knowl- 

 edge was the product of experience only. They sneered at mu- 

 seum doctors, and said that such were not fit to doctor a cat. 



But Boerhaave's greatest glory was the prominence he gave to 

 clinical instruction. Instead of aimless wandering through the 

 hospital wards, he adopted the plan of examining few patients, 

 but with them to be exact, thorough, and exhaustive. At the 

 bedside he taught with great minuteness the conditions that 

 prevail in health, and then the changes wrought by disease, and 

 upon these data he proceeded to formulate his therapeusis. 

 Under him the post-mortem room assumed the same importance 

 as the library, the chemical laboratory, the dissecting room, and 

 the botanical gardens. His pupils in other lands established 

 clinics and clinical instruction in conformity with the precedents 

 he established. The clinical schools of Edinburgh and Vienna, 

 under the guidance of Cullen and Van Swieten, owe their glory 

 to his transplanted spirit. 



His system of treatment, like that of Sydenham and Hip- 

 pocrates, comprised few remedies, and laid great stress upon 

 hygiene. He had little faith in the prevailing elixirs ad long am 

 vitam. " As to nostrums," he says, " let those who have them 

 keep them till they can convince impartial observers of their 

 real worth." In a footnote to this, Burton, who was his Boswell 

 and worshiper, says, " Mrs. Stephens' saponaceous dissolvent for 

 stone in the kidneys and bladder may be a proof of one of them." 



In 1718 he accepted, in addition to his other public positions, 

 the professorship of chemistry, then left vacant by the death of 

 Le Mort. In 1738 he published his Elements of Chemistry. It 

 is divided into three parts. The first is historical, and is full of 

 curious learning; the second part presents Boerhaave's theoret- 

 ical views ; while in the third part the author's personal observa- 

 tions are given. These are chiefly of interest as showing the vol- 

 ume of useless experimentation that preceded solid advances in 

 chemical science. 



As a sample of old-time ways, Burton, with loving admiration, 

 details Boerhaave's attempt to accomplish the consummate purifi- 

 cation of quicksilver. " With matchless perseverance he tortured 

 it by conquassation, trituration, digestion, and by distillation. 

 He amalgamated it with lead, tin, or gold, repeating this opera- 

 tion to 511 or even to 877 distillations." But alas ! owing to an 

 inherent turpitude in the metal, at the end it was only the same 

 quicksilver as at the beginning. 



That this and similar experiences were not satisfactory to 

 Boerhaave is evident from his preface. The work, he complains, 

 was produced at the instance of his friends, and because of spuri- 



VOL. XLVII. 10 



