BOERHAAVE'S BIOCHEMISTRY

Abstract

by F. R. JEVONS ON Boerhaave's portrait,1 the rotund and jovial face, the cheerful eyes and gentle, good-humoured smile suggest the genial disposition which doubtless contributed much to his immense popularity as a teacher.This was the man who, during the winter, would give weekly musical parties, himself performing with voice, lute and other instruments; and who ate his food with an honest enjoyment to which his tall, corpulent frame bore witness-though, careful of his purse as well as of his health, he gave rein to his great appetite only at dinner, and instead of wine drank mostly water and the oat-ale called moll.2 Around the face on the portrait run the words, HERMANNUS BOERHAAVE BOT.CHEM.& MED.PROF.IN ACAD.LEID.REGG.SOCC.LOND.&PAR. SOC.The inscription epitomizes two further important facts about him: the breadth of his scholarship, indicated by his tenure of chairs of chemistry and botany as well as medicine, and international recognition by the world of learning, represented here by the two outstanding scientific societies of the day.The reputation of this 'Batavian Hippocrates' was such that Leyden in his day was undoubtedly one of the most influential medical schools not only of that, but of any age.Students flocked thither from all over Europe, and from the seeds liberally scattered by the great teacher grew much of the medical glory of Edinburgh and Vienna, not to mention the immense reputation that Haller made both for himself and for the University newly founded by George II at Gottingen.Among the plentiful evidence of Boerhaave's fame, his biographer delighted especially in the story of 'Peter the Great late Czar of Muscovy; who did not repent lying all night in his pleasure barge against Boerhaave's house, in order to have two hours conversation with him on various points of learning the next morning before college time '." Boerhaave's interest in chemistry dated from the early I69os, when he first studied medicine.At that time, he already had behind him a degree in philosophy and an education unusually broad by the standards of any age.At the University of Leyden he had eagerly imbibed logic, geography, natural philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, rhetoric and chronology; among the ancient tongues, he had mastered not only Greek and Latin but also Hebrew and Chaldee; 'till perceiving the necessity ofmathematics', in a way so characteristic of the time, he had found the greatest satisfaction in the geometry of the ancients as well as the algebra of the moderns-all this quite apart from the divinity which qualified him as a preacher.4Still unsatisfied, however, he spent his early twenties studying medicine, including its auxiliary subjects chemistry and botany.5 Chemistry in particular, 'the key to nature', captivated him, and he learned much that could not be got from books from a friendship with the chemist Stam.His brother James was his companion in these early studies; years later, in dedicating the Elements of Chemistry to him, Herman gratefully

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