Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/119

Rh "mores sanctissimos, raram virtutem, amabilem indolem" of this beloved stepmother.

The elder son by the second marriage, James was selected for the medical profession, but the influence of heredity was too strong. He tired of physic, and became an eminent divine at Leyden.

Hermann, on the other hand, was designed for the pulpit. His maternal grandfather, Hermann Daeldir, was famous as a maker of instruments of navigation in Amsterdam. His mother was regarded as a great authority in the simple medication for the parish poor. He was brought up to regard divinity as the highest of all professions, and was deeply imbued with the religious sense; but his native instincts and tastes were always for scientific investigation, and a trivial incident made him one of the greatest physicians of all times. In after life, when at the zenith of his fame, he modestly wrote a dedication of his work on chemistry to his brother; in referring to the plans laid out for them both in their boyhood he says: "Providence disposed of us otherwise; and exchanging our views, consigned you to the service of religion, and made me, whose talents were unequal to higher things, humbly contented with the profession of physic."

At eleven, under his father's instruction, he was well versed in Latin and Greek, and ready at the grammatical rules of both tongues, for to be a good grammarian was the ambition of the countrymen of Erasmus. To write Latin with elegance and ease was essential when the Latin language was the means of communication between learned men over the entire civilized world.

In those childish days it is interesting to learn that the serious minded boy delighted in devoting his leisure hours to the culture of the little garden of the parsonage. Holland was then, Griffin tells us, the gayest garden land of Europe, and later, under the skilled direction of Boerhaave, the botanical garden of Leyden became the most renowned in the world.

From the twelfth to the seventeenth year the boy suffered greatly from hip disease. He tells us it was the grievous pain from this source which led him to contemplate the study of medicine. But the malady seems scarcely to have affected his progress in his studies. At fourteen he was sent to the public school in Leyden, where he was rapidly advanced in his studies, winning all the prizes, and at sixteen, he was admitted to the university. It may here be parenthetically stated that the schools of Holland were the best in the world. They received state aid, and were free to the needy student.

Meantime the father of Boerhaave had died, and left his family in straitened circumstances; but, in Leyden, where, after its heroic siege, while the memory of plague and famine was still