coming from every country in Europe to consult him about their maladies. Boerhaave was also most popular among his fellow townsmen. It is related of him, for example, that on one occasion, after he had been confined to the house for about six months by an illness of a gouty nature, the citizens of Leyden manifested their joy at his recovery by inaugurating a general illumination of the town during the evening of the day on which he made his first appearance on the street. He had two relapses of the gouty affection, one in 1727 and another in 1729, and he finally died from disease of the heart on September 23, 1738. The monument raised in his honor by the city of Leyden bears the inscription: "Salutifero Boerhaavii genio sacrum" (Sacred to the memory of the health-giving genius of Boerhaave).
Some idea of the lucrative character of Boerhaave's private practice may be gained from the fact that he left to his only child, a daughter, the sum of about four million francs. And yet he was noted for the generous gifts which he made during his lifetime to all sorts of scientific and benevolent objects.
Boerhaave, says Dezeimeris, exercised during his career, and also for a long time after his death, an immense influence upon medical thought. He is justly ranked, he adds, among the iatromathematicians, and it is correct to say that he was largely instrumental in overthrowing the chemical system which de le Boë (Sylvius) had developed. His own treatise on this branch of knowledge ("Elementa Chemiae"), which was published toward the end of his life, soon became the standard work on this subject, and it retained its popularity for many years. "It is to be regretted that, possessing as Boerhaave unquestionably did, remarkable powers of observation, he should have allowed himself, in opposition to the very principles which he advocated so strongly, to indulge in the making of systems and hypotheses. He commenced by advocating with enthusiasm the method of Hippocrates, and ended by following the brilliant but not very trustworthy example of Galen." (Dezeimeris.)
