10 



HANDBOOK OF I'HVSIOLOGV ^ NEUROPHYSIOLOGS' I 



FIG. 5. Bocrhaave giving a class in botany. (From the en- 

 graving by Jacob Folkema, reproduced by permission of the 

 Rijksuniversiteit in Leiden.) 



tions of the nervous system; the brain was analogous 

 to the heart and the nerves analogous to the arteries. 

 In the one case the content was blood; in the other, 

 nervous fluid. Some writers even spoke of "the systole 

 of the brain . . . whereby the animal Juices are forci- 

 bly driven into Fibres of the Nerves" (46). 



van Musschenbroek had been a pupil of Hermanii 

 Boerhaave who came to the Chair of Medicine in 

 Leiden in 1701. Boerhaave, essentially a chemist 

 and a clinician, had an almost leaiendary fame as a 

 teacher, which must, one feels, have been due to his 

 personality, for he was not an experimenter and his 

 doctrines were not at all progressive. He added little 

 if anything new to the existing body of physiological 



46. Robinson, Nichol.a.s. A new system of /he Spleen, Vapours, 

 and Hypoehondriak Melanchoh. London, 1729, p. '^62. 



knowledge. In his lectures (47, 48) on the nervous 

 system he taught that "The Ventricles of the Brain 

 have also many Uses or Ad\antages in Life, such as 

 the perpetual Exhalation of a thin \'apour, or moist 

 Dew." Himself a chemist, he made no experiments 

 in ph\siology and was content to teach that "Tho' 

 the nervous Juice or Spirits separated in the Brain 

 are the most subtile and moveable of any Humour 

 throughout the whole Body, yet are they formed 

 like the rest from the same thicker Fluid the Blood, 

 passing thro' many Degrees of Attenuation, till its 

 Parts become small enough to pervade the last 

 Series of Vessels in the Cortex, and then it becomes 

 the subtile Fluid of the Brain and Nerves." His au- 

 thority for this doctrine which he handed on to his 

 eighteenth century pupils was the works of Galen 

 who had died in 200 A.D. These teachings are difficult 

 to reconcile with the exhortation expressed in his 

 Aphorismi (49) that attention to facts and observations 

 is the best means of promoting medical knowledge. 



Yet among his pupils Boerhaave numbered nearly 

 all the prominent students of the nervous system in 

 the eighteenth century: Haller, van Swieten, Monro, 

 CuUen, de Haen, Pringle. His pre-eminence lay 

 in the clinical field, and there can be no doubt that 

 he had the greatest gift of a teacher, that of lighting 

 the fire of enthusiasm in his students. It was two of 

 them, Haller (50) and \an Swieten (51), who were 

 responsible for the wider publication of his lectures, 

 for on his own initiative he published little. 



van Swieten, who as a Catholic had little chance of 

 advancement at the L'niversity of Leiden, went to 

 Austria under the patronage of Maria Theresa and 

 there founded the 'Old Vienna School,' patterning it 

 on the medical clinic at Leiden. He was an advocate 

 of a spare diet and active exertion and quoted in sup- 

 port of his views "the case of a rich priest, who had 



47. BoERH.^.WE, Herm.-^nn (1668-1738). Instituliones Medicae 

 in usus animal exercitationis domesticae. Leyden, 1708; anony- 

 mous English translation. Academical Lectures on the Theory 

 of Physic, being a genuine translation of his Institutes, and Ex- 

 planatory Comment. London: Innys, 1743. 5 v'ol. 



48. BoERH.^.AVE, H. Praelectiones Academicae de .\lorbis Nervorum. 

 Quas ex Audilorwn Manuscriptis collectas edi curavil. Jacobus 

 van Eems. Leyden: van der Eyk & Pecker, 1761. 2 vol. 



49. BoERH.^AVE, H. .Aphorismi de cognoscendis et curandis 

 morbis. Leyden: van der Linden, 1709. 



50. VON Haller, Albrecht (i 708-1 777). Commentarii ad 

 Hermann Boerhaave Praelectiones Academicae in proprias 

 Irutitutiones Rei Medicae. 1 739-1 744. 7 vol. 



51. VAN Swieten, Gerhard L.B. (1700-1772). Commentaria 

 in Hermanni Boerhaave, aphorismos, de cognoscendis et curandis 

 morbis. Leiden: Verbeek, 1742-1776. 6 vol. 



