Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Herman Boerhaave

  • Herman Boerhaave

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, UK Herman Boerhaave was born on December 13, 1668, in Voorhout, a small village north of Leiden, Holland, an area known for its tulip-growing. He initially studied divinity, intending to be a priest, then continued his philosophy studies in Leiden on a scholarship when his father died. He then studied medicine…

  • Gerard van Swieten and his reforms

    A massive statue in Vienna shows the empress Maria Theresia, imperial in bronze as she had been in life, surrounded by her generals and by an ennobled Dutch physician, the Baron Gerard van Swieten. She had recruited him from the medical department of the great Herman Boerhaave in Leiden, and he had come to Vienna…