Hermann, one of the most celebrated physicians of modern times, was born at Woerbrant near Leyden, December 31, 1668. Destined for the clerical profession, to which his father belonged, he received a liberal education, and early displayed unusual abilities. At the age of sixteen he entered the university of Leyden, where he studied under Gronovius, Ryckius, Trigland, and other distinguished men, and obtained the highest academic honours. In 1690 he took his degree in philosophy; on which occasion he delivered an inaugural dissertation De distinzione mentis à corpore, in which he attacked the doctrines of Epicurus, Hobbs, and Spinoza. Being left, on the death of his father, without any provision, he was compelled to support himself by teaching mathematics. By the advice of Vandenberg, the burgomaster of Leyden, Boerhaave now applied himself with ardour to the study of medicine, to which indeed he had early manifested a decided inclination. The works of Hippocrates among the ancients, and those of Sydenham among the moderns, were the especial objects of his study; but his reading was by no means confined to these authors. In 1693 he took his degree of M.D. at Harderwyck in Guelderland, and immediately entered on the duties of his profession. His merits soon became conspicuous; and in 1701 he was appointed by the university of Leyden to supply the place of Drelincourt as lecturer on the institutes of medicine. His inaugural discourse on this occasion was entitled De commendando Hippocratico studio, in which he recommended to his pupils that great physician as their model. In 1709, the university rewarded his distinguished merit by appointing him successor to Hetton in the chair of botany and medicine, in which capacity Boerhaave did great service, not only to his own university, but also to botanical science, by his improvements and additions to the botanic garden of Leyden, and by the publication of numerous works descriptive of new species of plants. He was appointed in 1714 rector of the university. In the same year he succeeded Bidloo in the chair of practical medicine, and in this capacity he had the merit of introducing into modern practice the system of clinical instruction. Four years later he was appointed to the chair of chemistry, and delivered an inaugural discourse, which contains the germs of his celebrated Elements of Chemistry. In 1728 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, which he bore with Christian patience and firmness, on the morning of the 23rd September 1738. His funeral oration was delivered by his pious and learned friend the Rev. Mr Schultens.

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 dispositions 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; he used often to observe that the life of a patient, if trifled with or neglected, would one day be required at the hand of the physician. He used to say that the poor were his best patients, because God was their paymaster. His benevolence, however, was exercised with discrimination. The activity of his mind sparkled visibly in his eyes. He was always cheerful, and desirous of promoting every valuable end of conversation, of which the excellency of the Christian religion was frequently the subject. He never regarded calumny nor detraction,—for even he had his enemies,—nor in any instance thought it necessary to confute them. "They are sparks," said he, "which, if you do not blow them, will go out of themselves. The surest remedy against scandal, is to live it down by a perseverance in well-doing; and by praying to God that he would cure the disordered minds of those who traduce and injure us." 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 "To the illustrious Boerhaave, physician in Europe;" and it reached him in due course. The city of Leyden raised a splendid monument to his memory in the church of St Peter, inscribed "To the salutary genius of Boerhaave," Salutifero Boerhaavii genio sacrum.

When Boerhaave first directed his attention to medicine, the philosophical reform inaugurated by Bacon had given a powerful impulse to the physical sciences; and these, accordingly, occupied all minds, whilst the healing art had but little profited in consequence. It was overlooked or forgotten that, from its very origin, Hippocrates had applied to it the experimental philosophy with which the learned were now everywhere so enthusiastically occupied. His theory, however, still continued to fluctuate between several dogmas equally remote from the truth. The chemists who, at the revival of learning in Europe, had overturned the authority of Galen, had to defend themselves against the sects of the mechanicians, and of Bellini, which divided the dominion of medicine between them. In a small portion of Germany alone Stahl brought back men's minds to the judicious doctrine of Hippocrates, attributing all the movements in the animal economy to a force inherent in itself, and different from the general forces of matter; but in adopting a word, the meaning of which was by no means precise, he rendered less general and less salutary the influence which he would otherwise have produced. The first perusal of Hippocrates Boëthius appeared to have carried away Boerhaave; but this physician, endowed by nature with a mind fitted for analysis, comparison, and combination rather than with a creative and inventive genius, was unable to resist the influence of his age, and above all, the effect of his early studies. Having been a mathematician and natural philosopher before he became physician, he was constantly carried away by the first objects of his labour and research; and being more capable than any one else of detecting the accessory affinities between these sciences and that of man, he ran greater risk of being seduced by them. But as every system, however vicious, has always, along with the facts which it arranges and offers to explain, a point of accordance more or less remote, he thought that the best medical system would be that which should unite and combine all opinions. Forgetting that living bodies are free during their life from those movements to which other bodies are imperiously constrained, or at least counterbalance them, and that all the acts which they perform are the result of an activity which is peculiar to them; overlooking, also, that those movements of the living economy which most easily admit an application of the laws of physics and mechanics, have, nevertheless, as a primum mobile, the force of life, and only receive from the forces of dead matter an accessory impulse; Boerhaave wished to combine in one and the same theory the vital philosophy of Hippocrates, the chemical principles of Sylvius, the mechanism of Bellini, and many other incongruities besides: attributing more, however, to the mechanical and chemical forces, which can never be but accessory, than to the more profound and secret powers of life, which are the principal. Thus the calibre of the vessels adjusted to the dimensions of the globules composing the liquids of the body, formed, according to him, the hydraulic relation on which depended the circulation of the humours, their separation from the blood in the different secretory organs, the morbid congestion of the blood in various fluxions, in humours, inflammations, and such like; and hence he concluded that all the efforts of the physician should be directed to establish this relation, or rather mechanical equilibrium. Nor did he stop even here. To the mechanical hypotheses just mentioned he added others founded on chemical principles, when, in attempting to explain the causes and the phenomena of diseases, he admitted the formation of pretended acrimonies in the blood, which the physician ought, according to him, to have constantly in view in order to neutralize them; acrimonies which were long famous in the language of the schools, and which are still found in that of ordinary life. The whole phenomena of diseases, with the spontaneous evacuations by which they are terminated, and which constitute the crises, find a ready explanation on this vicious system, which seems to offer a reason, when it only mystifies with a word, involving a gratuitous hypothesis. In practice, however, theory receives many modifications; and there can be little doubt, that in prescribing for patients, Boerhaave was more guided by experience and good sense than by the strangely eclectic doctrine to which we have here cursorily alluded.

The principal works of this illustrious physician are, 1. Institutiones Medicae, Lugd. Bat., 1708; 2. Aphorismi de cognoscendis et curandis Morbis, Lugd. Bat., 1709. On this work, which was the text book of Boerhaave's lectures, Van Swieten published a commentary in 5 vols. 4to; 3. Li- bellus de Materia Medica, et Remediorum Formulis quae serviant Aphorismus, Lugd. Bat., 1719. 4. Institutiones et Experimenta Chemicæ, Paris, 1724.

Boëthius, or Boëtius, Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus, a Roman statesman and philosopher, born of an illustrious patrician family, between A.D. 470 and 475. It is conjectured that he was the grandson of Flavius Boëthius, the prefect of the praetorium, who was murdered by Valentinian III., and that his father was the consul of A.D. 487. Being left an orphan at a very early age, the care of his education devolved on his relations, who sent him, it has been said, to Athens, where he resided eighteen years, and was a pupil of Proclus. This statement, however, rests only on the very questionable authority of Thomas Brabantinus (De Dis- ciplina Scholarium), and is in effect contradicted by Cassiodorus (i. 45). However this may be, he was early distinguished at Rome for the extent and variety of his acquirements, and his intimate acquaintance with the literature of Greece. Boëthius occupies a remarkable place in literary history, as standing on the confines between the ancient and scholastic philosophy; being, says Gibbon, the last of the Romans whom Cicero would have acknowledged for his countryman. He lived at Rome in great splendour and influence, and was not more distinguished for his learning than for his virtue and great liberality to the poor. Rising rapidly in the public esteem, he was successively appointed to various high offices in the state, and at length was made consul A.D. 510. That public affairs, however, did not entirely engross his attention, is testified by his great literary industry, and in particular by his voluminous translations from the Greek philosophers. As a statesman he was pre-eminent for integrity, as well as for his unremitting diligence in the detection of fraud and the suppression of violence, to which his countrymen were continually exposed from the rapacity of their Gothic invaders. The talents and virtues of Boëthius were duly appreciated by Theodoric, who made him magister officiorum in his court, and consulted him upon all affairs of importance. By that king he was employed to regulate the coinage with a view to the prevention of forgery; and he was engaged in some important negotiations with Gundebald, king of the Burgundians, and with Clovis, king of the Franks. He also appears to have paid some attention to practical mechanics, as among other specimens of his skill he constructed for Gundebald a clepsydra and a gnomon, which greatly delighted that prince.

Boëthius married Rusticiana, the daughter of Symmachus, and by her he had two sons, who were made consuls A.D. 522; upon which occasion, after pronouncing a panegyric on Theo- doric, he distributed among the populace a large sum of money. The consulships of his sons, and that of his father, have erroneously been ascribed to himself. The story also of his previous marriage with Elpis of Sicily appears to be a fable, as the two sons of that lady were consuls in the year 500, at which time Boëthius was certainly not above thirty years of age.

His unflinching integrity, and the zeal he displayed in defending his countrymen against the extortion and excesses of their Gothic masters, rendered Boëthius highly obnoxious to the courtiers; and they resolved to accomplish his ruin. Theodoric, now grown through old age morose and fretful, lent a ready ear to their insinuations against his noble minister; and of this disposition in the king, three men of profligate lives and desperate fortunes, Gaudentius, Opilio, and Basilus, took advantage in order to gratify private revenge. The boldness with which Boëthius defended Albinus when accused of treason, was made the plea on which they charged him with a design to dethrone the king and throw off the barbarian yoke; to which was added the crime of sacrilege or sorcery. Boëthius was at this time at a distance from Rome; yet Theodoric transmitted the complaint to the senate, who, partly perhaps through fear, condemned him to death without summoning him to his defence. Accordingly he was imprisoned at Ticinum (Pavia), in the baptistery of the church; and here, during his captivity, he composed his celebrated treatise De Consolatione Philosophiae. The manner of his death is uncertain; it has been said that his eyes were forced from their sockets by a cord drawn tightly round his head, and that he was beaten with clubs till he expired; but it is more probable that he suffered decapitation, A.D. 524–526. Two centuries afterwards, a cenotaph was erected to his memory in the church of S. Pietro Cielo d'Oro, by Luitprand king of the Lombards; and in 980 Otho III. honoured his memory with a magnificent mausoleum, which was inscribed with an epigraph by Pope Sylvester II.

It was for ages the custom to regard Boëthius as a Christian saint and martyr, but without any sufficient foundation; for unless the theological works sometimes ascribed to him be really his (which seems more than doubtful), there is no evidence of his having professed Christianity; nor is the name ever mentioned in the *Consolatio Philosophiae*, though the high moral tone, and the belief in prayer and a superintending Providence, might naturally lead to such an inference. This work is written in alternate prose and verse (the latter chiefly borrowed from Seneca), and is a dialogue between the author and Philosophy personified.

During the middle ages this work had many translators as well as imitators. For centuries the Peripatetic philosophy was studied only through the commentaries of Boëthius; but on the introduction of Aristotle's writings into Europe in the thirteenth century, the fame of Boëthius, whose works had in some measure supplied the void during 800 years, gradually began to decline, and sunk at length into comparative obscurity.

The learning and eloquence of Boëthius are conspicuous in his works, which were first published in a collected form at Venice, in folio, 1491 (or 1492); and an improved edition, in folio, appeared at Basle in 1570. It is worthy of notice that Boëthius is one of the principal Latin writers on music, and that his treatise *De Musica* supplied for some centuries the want of those Greek manuscripts which were supposed to be lost. It may also be observed, as an interesting fact in literary history, that Alfred the Great translated the *Consolatio Philosophiae* into Anglo-Saxon, with large original additions. The best edition of this work is by J. S. Cardale, with notes and a translation, 1828.