of bloody matter and then of pure blood. For the removal thereof he took certain scrapings, which seem to have been in anticipation of the animal extracts of the present day, upon which the pains grew less. Then he took a drink of goat's blood, and the spitting of blood ceased in four days, leaving only a slight cough with a moderate expectoration; but the fever still remained, and was followed by a pain in the spleen, for which he took wine boiled with crabs' eyes, whereupon all the symptoms disappeared.
Medicine was not only obscured by the vagaries of the chemists, but knowledge was darkened by the theories of philosophers, who sought by shutting their eyes to arrive at truth by purely intellectual processes. Now, Boerhaave's teaching was an unceasing protest against the errors of his times. His introductory oration at the beginning of his career as a teacher was one extolling Hippocrates. To you, to whom the father of medicine is probably little more than a name, it may be proper to mention that the veneration in which he has been held is due to his having been the first to found medical teaching upon naked and indisputable facts. He was the nineteenth physician in succession in the same family. The records of his forefathers, the fruits of travel, the clinical experiences upon the isle of Cos, and the reports of his pupils formed the material of his Observations, which still are read with wonder and with profit. After him, from Galen to Vesalius, great advances were made in anatomy, and Harvey had discovered the circulation of the blood, but there was little contributed to the practice of medicine until Sydenham—the "immortal Sydenham" Boerhaave loved to term him, though at that time his merits had not been recognized by his own countrymen.
The qualifications of Boerhaave for the reconstruction of medicine were extraordinary. His memory was amazing. He had a familiar acquaintance with the works of his predecessors in medicine and in the kindred sciences. He conversed in English, French, and German, and could read easily Italian and Spanish, so that few new reports from those countries escaped his notice. He had studied with profit the writings of Lord Bacon, of Sir Isaac Newton, and of Robert Boyle. He had followed with eager interest the microscopic discoveries of Malpighi, Leuwenhoeck, and Ruysch, and he had a vision which could overlook the entire field, and see all branches of knowledge in their proper relations. With such gifts and training his Institutes of Medicine, published in 1707, in which all the teachings in anatomy, in physiology, and in pathology up to his time were, after the severest personal scrutiny, made the foundation of the theory and treament of disease, rapidly became the text-book of Europe and of the East, and long remained in the hands of his pupils the basis of medical teaching. Yet there were so-called "practical
