Top 9 Quotes & Sayings by Herman Boerhaave

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Dutch botanist Herman Boerhaave.

Last updated on December 18, 2024.

Herman Boerhaave was a Dutch botanist, chemist, Christian humanist, and physician of European fame. He is regarded as the founder of clinical teaching and of the modern academic hospital and is sometimes referred to as "the father of physiology," along with Venetian physician Santorio Santorio (1561–1636). Boerhaave introduced the quantitative approach into medicine, along with his pupil Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777) and is best known for demonstrating the relation of symptoms to lesions. He was the first to isolate the chemical urea from urine. He was the first physician to put thermometer measurements to clinical practice. His motto was Simplex sigillum veri: 'Simplicity is the sign of the truth'. He is often hailed as the "Dutch Hippocrates".

Dutch - Botanist | December 31, 1668 - September 23, 1738

Source: Wikipedia

My poor are my best patients. God pays for them.

Herman Boerhaave

The surest method against scandal is to live it down by perseverance in well-doing, and by prayer to God that He would cure the distempered mind of those who traduce and injure us.

Herman Boerhaave

A disease which new and obscure to you, Doctor, will be known only after death; and even then not without an autopsy will you examine it with exacting pains. But rare are those among the extremely busy clinicians who are willing or capable of doing this correctly.

Herman Boerhaave

For chemistry is no science form'd à priori; 'tis no production of the human mind, framed by reasoning and deduction: it took its rise from a number of experiments casually made, without any expectation of what follow'd; and was only reduced into an art or system, by collecting and comparing the effects of such unpremeditated experiments, and observing the uniform tendency thereof. So far, then, as a number of experimenters agree to establish any undoubted truth; so far they may be consider'd as constituting the theory of chemistry.

Herman Boerhaave

It were indeed to be wish'd that our art had been less ingenious, in contriving means destructive to mankind; we mean those instruments of war, which were unknown to the ancients, and have made such havoc among the moderns. But as men have always been bent on seeking each other's destruction by continual wars; and as force, when brought against us, can only be repelled by force; the chief support of war, must, after money, be now sought in chemistry.

Herman Boerhaave

Generation by male and female is a law common to animals and plants.

Herman Boerhaave

I never think it necessary to repeat calumnies; they are sparks, which, if you do not blow them, will go out of themselves.

Herman Boerhaave