Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/487

 under the guidance of the anatomist Nuck, and also occasionally attended the lectures given by Drelincourt, who at that time was Professor of the Theory of Medicine. In his reading of medical literature he showed a decided preference for the writings of Hippocrates and Sydenham; and he devoted a large portion of his time to the study of botany and chemistry, two branches of the science of medicine in which he took a very strong interest all through life. In 1693 he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Harderwyk. In 1701 he was appointed Associate Professor of the Theory of Medicine in the University of Leyden, and it was in this capacity that he began building up that great reputation which in a very few years brought crowds of students from all parts of the world to Leyden. As already stated on a previous page, he owed a large part of his fame to the admirable manner in which he conducted his clinical teaching. To show how widely he was known throughout Europe the story is told that a letter which had been sent to him from a mandarin living in China and which bore the address, "To the illustrious Boerhaave, Physician in Europe," reached him in due course.

Soon after his first appointment at Leyden, he received other most flattering offers, such as that of William the Third, Hereditary Prince of the Netherlands, to accept the position of Court Physician at The Hague, and a call from the University of Groningen (1703) to occupy the Chair of Medicine. He declined these offers as he preferred to remain at Leyden; but, a few years later, in 1709, he accepted the full professorship of the Practice of Medicine in the institution with which he was already connected. From the vantage ground of this more responsible position he was able most successfully to teach the students the best methods of observing, identifying and treating the different diseases; and as a further result of this promotion in rank his private practice grew rapidly, monarchs and princes