The luminati of Leiden: from Bontius to Boerhaave

In the glittering canopy of the history of great medical centers of Europe, none was more viviscent than Leiden. Although wealthy nations nurtured great medical establishments in Padua, Salerno, Montpellier, and Paris, it was from a diminutive market town in The Netherlands that a group of medical cognoscenti arose whose intellectual prowess blazed across the intellectual firmament of seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe. The tradition of medical excellence established by Bontius was amplified by the surgeon Peter Paaw, whose stewardship of the Anatomical Theater guided it to heights comparable to those achieved at Padua. At the same time, Clusius established a botanical garden that would have no rival for two centuries. The multitalented Sylvius educated some of the greatest minds of the generation, accepted the Harveian theories of circulation, and succeeded in fostering an intellectual environment characterized by novel ideas and tolerance of thought. van Horne defined and chartered the existence of lymphatic circulation, and Bartholin destroyed the myth of the liver as a source of blood. Exalting in the freedom of thought, the cabal of Ruysch, Steensen, de Graaf, and Swammerdam banded together under Sylvius and van Horne and made significant advances in pancreatic, lymphatic, reproductive, and respiratory physiology. There is little doubt, however, that of all the great names linked with Leiden, it is Boerhaave's that is universally held to be synonymous with that of the city. As a clinician, scientist, and teacher, the aura of his knowledge and fame spread to the farthest corners of Europe. Without doubt, the great medical schools of Edinburgh, Vienna, and Gottingen owe their subsequent potency to him. Thus the legacy of Leiden provides the richest of all earthly concepts-an appreciation of the unique spiritual power and intellectual wealth that devolves from the pursuit of the life of the mind.