JEROME-DAVID, M.D. professor of medicine at Leyden, and afterwards fellow of the Royal Society of London, was born at Heidelberg in the year 1705. From the Jesuits he received the rudiments of his education, and was much esteemed by them on account of his abilities; but his father afterwards sent him to the orphan house of Halle, lest he should be obliged to abjure his religion. The nature of the discipline, however, he here found to be much too severe, which induced him to request his father to remove him from it, which was accordingly complied with. His teacher at this hospital attributing the dislike of young Gaubius to the want of genius, urged him to give his son some mechanical employment; but the father thought proper to indulge his ardent desire after knowledge, and accordingly sent him to Amsterdam to study under his uncle John, who was an eminent physician. After prosecuting his medical studies for some time at Hordwyk, he resolved to visit Leyden, where the immortal Boerhaave was an eminent professor, and whose penetrating eye soon discovered that Gaubius was possessed of talents above mediocrity. He honoured him with unlimited access to his house, delighted in imparting instruction to him, and gradually forwarded the cultivation of his mind. He took the degree of doctor at the age of 20, after a disputation on the nature of solids, containing an abstract of the system which he himself followed through life.

He travelled through various parts of Europe, and when he returned to Heidelberg by the way of Strasbourg, he was appointed city-physician at Deventer in the province of Overysel; but he soon after removed to Amsterdam. Boerhaave never lost sight of his favourite pupil; for when the infirmities of old age and indefatigable labour made him anxious to resign his chair, Gaubius on his recommendation was appointed to succeed him. He published his Instructions for writing Recipes in the year 1738, by which he acquired great and justly merited approbation, as he reduced the art from a mere mechanical to a scientific form. His Principles of Nosology is perhaps his most masterly performance, as it evinced that he was highly worthy of such a preceptor. His next publication, which appeared in 1771, was his "Adversaria variii Argumenti," a work which was particularly interesting to chemists; and his oration on the 200th anniversary of the academy of Leyden attracted considerable notice, as in it he traced out, with his accustomed acumen, the chief epochs of the arts and sciences in Holland.

He was likewise the author of numerous and valuable papers in the Transactions of the Society of Haerlem, and was editor of many excellent performances, among which we may rank Cramer's Elementa artis documtisticae; Albinius de presagienda vita et morte, and Swammerdam's Book of Nature, which he partly translated. His literary merit spread his fame so far beyond the bounds of his native country, that pupils repaired to Leyden from every quarter of Europe. In addition to his widely extended reputation, he was blessed with the enjoyment of good health till he was 70 years of age, and died on the 29th of November 1780, in his seventy-fifth year.

One work of his, entitled "Institutiones Pathologie Medicinalis," was deemed so valuable by Professor Ackerman, and of such singular advantage in academical lectures, that he gave the world a fourth edition of it, published at Nuremberg in 1787.