er
natural causes on the process of disease. He believed in the healing
power of nature to an even greater degree than did Hippocrates. He
claimed that disease was nothing more than an effort on the part of
nature to restore the health of the patient by the elimination of the
morbific matter.

The reform of practical medicine was effected by men who advocated the
rejection of all hypothesis and the impartial study of natural
processes, as shown in health and disease. Sydenham showed that these
natural processes could be studied and dealt with without being
explained, and, by laying stress on facts and disregarding
_explanations_, he introduced a _method_ in medicine far more fruitful
than any discoveries. Though the dogmatic spirit continued to live for a
long time, the reign of standard authority had passed."

"_Boerhaave._ In the latter part of the seventeenth century a physician
arose (1668-1738) who was destined to become far more prominent in the
medical world than any of the English physicians of the age of Queen
Anne, though he differed but little from them in his way of thinking.
This was _Hermann Boerhaave_. For many years he was professor of
medicine at Leyden, and excelled in influence and reputation not only
his greatest forerunners, Montanus of Padua and Sylvius of Leyden, but
probably every subsequent teacher. The Hospital of Leyden became the
centre of medical influence in Europe. Many of the leading English
physicians of the 18th century studied there. Boerhaave's method of
teaching was transplanted to Vienna through one of his pupils, Gerard
Van Swieten, and thus the noted Vienna school of medicine was founded.

The services of Boerhaave to the progress of medicine can hardly be
overestimated. He was the organizer and almost the constructor of the
modern method of clinical instruction. He followed the methods of
Hippocrates and Sydenham in his teachings and in his practice. The
points of his system that are best known are his doctrines of
inflammation, obstruction, and 'plethora.' In the practice of medicine
he aimed to make use of all the anatomical and physiological
acquisitions of his age, including microscopical anatomy.

In this respect he differed from Sydenham, for the latter paid but
little more attention to modern medicine than to ancient dogma. In some
respects he was like Galen, but again differed from him, as he did not
wish to reduce his knowledge to any definite system. He spent much t