Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/873

Rh chair of chemistry, and delivered an inaugural discourse, which contains the germs of his celebrated Elements of Chemistry. In 1 728 he was elected into the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris, and two years later into the Royal Society of London ; to both of which he communicated his chemical researches In 1729 declining health obliged him to resign the chairs of chemistry and botany ; and in 1731 he resigned the rectorship of the university, to which office he had been re-elected On this occasion he delivered a discourse De Honore Medici Servitute. This great and good man died, after a lingering and painful illness, on the inerning of the 23d September 1738. From the time of Hippocrates, no physician had more justly merited the esteem of his contemporaries and the admiration of posterity than Boerhaave. To uncommon intellectual abilities he united those amiable qualities of the heart which give them so great a value to society. His personal appearance was simple and venerable. He taught very methodically, and with great precision ; his style was eloquent, and his delivery dignified and graceful. He sometimes also gave his lectures a lively turn ; but his raillery was never coarse or satirical. He possessed remarkable powers of memory, and was an accomplished linguist A declared foe to all excess, he considered decent mirth as the salt of life. He was fond of music, with which he had a scientific acquaintance ; and during winter he had a weekly concert in his house. It was his daily practice throughout life, as soon as he rose in the morning, which was generally very early, to retire for an hour to private prayer and meditation on some part of the Scriptures. He often told his friends, when they asked him how it was possible for him to go through so much fatigue, that it was this practice which gave him spirit and vigour in the business of the day. Of his sagacity, and the wonderful penetration with which he often discovered and described, at first sight, such distempers as betray themselves by no symptoms to common eyes, very surprising accounts have been transmitted to us. Yet so far was he from having presumptuous confidence in his own abilities, or from being puffed up by prosperity, that he was condescending to all, and remarkably diligent in his profession. His great skill and celebrity as a physician brought him a large fortune. He left his only surviving daughter two millions of florins. The genius of Boerhaave raised the fame of the University of Leyden, especially as a school of medicine, so as to make it a resort of strangers from every part of Europe. All the princes of Europe sent him disciples, who found in this skilful professor not only an indefatigable teacher, but an affectionate guardian. When Peter the Great went to Holland in 1715, to instruct himself in maritime affairs, he also took lessons from Boerhaave. The reputation of this eminent man was not confined to Europe ; a Chinese mandarin wrote him a letter directed &quot; To the illustrious Boerhaave, physician in Europe,&quot; and it reached him in due course. The city of Leyden raised a splendid monu ment to Ins memory in the church of St Peter, inscribed &quot; To the health-giving genius of Boerhaave,&quot; SALUTIFERO BOERHAAVII GEXIO SACRUM. The principal works of Boerhaave are (1.) Instdutiones Mediae, Leyden, 1708; (2.) Aphorismi de cognoscendis el curandis Morlis, Leyden, 1709, on this work, which was the text-book of Boerhaave s lectures, Van Swieten pub lished a commentary in 5 vols. 4 to ; (3.) Libellus de Materia Medico, ct Rcmediorum Formulis, Leyden, 1719; (4.) Institutions* et Expenmenta CJiemice, Paris, 1724.  BOETIUS,, is described by Gibbon &quot; as the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman.&quot; The events of his life are involved in uncertainty. The historians of the day give us but imperfect records or make unsatisfactory allusions. Later chroniclers indulged in the fictitious and the marvellous, and it is almost exclusively from his own books that trustworthy information can be obtained. There is considerable diversity among authorities as to the name of Boetius. One editor of his De Consolatione, Bertius, thinks that he bore the pnenomeu cf Flavins, but there is no authority for this supposition. His father bore the name of Flavius, and it is probable that the Flavins Boetius who was prsetorian prefect, and who was put to death in 455 A.D., by order of Yalentinian III., was the grandfather of the subject of our notice ; but these circum stances form no good reason for supposing that he also had the prsenornen of Flavius. Many of the earlier editions inserted the name of Torquatus, but it is not found in any of the best manuscripts. The last name is generally written Boethius, from the idea that it is connected with the Greek /?o?;$os; but here, again, the best manuscripts agree in reading Boetius, and the latest editors have adopted this form. The date of his birth is unknown ; but it is conjectured on good grounds that he was born at Rome somewhere about the year 475 A.D. He was, therefore, too young to see the last of the Roman emperors (476), and his boyhood was spent in Rome while Odoacer, king of the Heruli, was monarch of that city. We know nothing of his early years. A passage in a treatise falsely ascribed to him (De Ditciplina, Scholar iurn) and a misinterpretation of a passage in Cassiodorus, led early scholars to suppose that he spent a long time in Athens pursuing his studies there ; but later biographers have seen that there is no foundation for this opinion. His father, Flavius Manlius Boetius was consul in the year 487. It is probable that he died soon after ; for Boetius states that, when he was bereaved of his parent, men of the highest rank took him under their charge (De Con., lib. iL c. 3). He soon became well known for his energy and ability, and his high rank gave him access to the noblest families. He married Rusticiana, the daughter of the senator Symmachus. By her he had two sons, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boetius and Q. Aurelius Meinmius Symmachus. When Theodoric, the king of the Ostrogoths, displaced Odoacer no change of for tune for the worse seems to have befallen Boetius. On the contrary he became a favourite with that monarch, and was one of his intimate friends. Boetius attained to the consul ship in 510, and his sons, while still young, held the same honour together (522). Boetius regarded it as the height of his good fortune when he witnessed his two sons, consuls at the same time, convoyed from their home to the senate- house by a crowd of senators amidst the enthusiasm of the masses. On that day, he tells us, while his sons occupied the curule chairs in the senate-house, he himself had the honour of pronouncing a panegyric on the monarch, and placed between his two sons he distributed largesses among, the people in the circus. But his good fortune did not last, and he attributes the calamities that came upon him to the ill-will which his bold maintenance of justice had caused, and to his opposition to every oppressive measure. &quot;How often,&quot; he says, &quot; have I opposed the attacks of Conigastus on the property of the weak 1 how often have I kept Trigguilla, the chamberlain of the palace, from perpetrating acts of injustice? how often have I protected, by influence exercised at my own peril, the miserable whom the licensed avarice of the barbarians always harassed with endless insults?&quot; And then he mentions several particular cases. A famine had begun to rage. The prefect of the praetorium was deter mined to satisfy the soldiers, regardless altogether of the feelings of the provincials. He accordingly issued an edict for a c.oemptio, that is, an order compelling the provincials 