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ePaper created 2014-09-15, 12:31:02 | version 1.32.01
9 Herman Boerhaave Professor of medicine, botany and chemistry in Leiden, Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738), was a famous teacher of medicine, attracting students from all over Europe, including for instance Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778). He also was a world famous clinician and scientist. He promoted mechanistic disease explanations with a corpuscularian matter theory, seeing health in terms of hydrostatic equilibrium, a balance of internal fluid pressures.[1] Boerhaave attached great importance to autopsy, as a means through which the consistency between anatomical abnormalities and clinical symptoms could be established. Regarding the Great Pox (syphilis), ravaging European countries in those days, he argued that it had arisen as a result of African sexual promiscuity, but that in Europe it could be spread in a number of ways, and not only by genital contact.[2] One of Boerhaave’s pupils was the Dutchman Gerard van Swieten (1700-1772), who later became professor of medicine in Vienna and personal physician to Queen Maria Theresia of Austria. He questioned the utility of the conventional mercury salivation therapy and developed and studied the use of mercury water therapy for syphilis. His formula (the so-called Van Swieten’s liquor) was listed in the pharmacopeia of many countries, including Japan, up to 1930.[3] Opera Omnia Medica: an anthology of works by Herman Boerhaave. BWEADVSMGFINCORR:Opmaak 1 21-07-2014 17:39 Pagina 9