The Dutch physician Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738) was one of the most influential medical scientists and teachers of the eighteenth century.
Herman Boerhaave - painted by Cornelis Troost
Boerhaave was way ahead of his time, arguing that medicine should be based not only on a theoretical study of the human body, as had been standard practice until then, but on close bedside observation of symptoms. At the St Caecilia Gasthuis municipal hospital in Leiden he maintained a 12-bed ‘teaching ward’ where students followed each patient’s treatment and drug regime as a ‘case study’ – just as Alice Edith Vlieland saw puerpural fever being passed from nurse to new mother in the lying-in wards of Heavitree and pioneered a hygiene regime to combat it.
Dr Michael Lee Dicker studied with Boerhaave for a year in 1717–1718, gaining his Doctorate in Medicine from Leiden University before setting up in practice in Exeter and ten years later commissioning Magdalen House in Magdalen Street. When the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital was opened in 1743, he was among some of ‘the most distinguished doctors and physicians in the country’ working there, including Thomas Glass (1709–1786) and John Andrew (?1700–1772), both Boerhaave pupils.
Thanks to Barbara
European Museum of the year Rijksmuseum Boerhaave Leiden .
Our museum has been named after Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738), one of the leading scientists in Europe in his day. He was an allrounder: a skilled physician, anatomist, botanist, chemist, humanist and researcher. He had a great reputation as a teacher at the University of Leiden and for a long time held three of the five chairs in its Faculty of Medicine. He was also Rector of the University of Leiden and Director of the Hortus botanicus.
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