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Not a few of those who were privileged to receive instruction from this celebrated physician became themselves distinguished afterward as teachers or authors, and thus Boerhaave’s method of teaching was perpetuated. Among the physicians to whom reference has just been made were such men as Albrecht von Haller, of Berne, Switzerland, Van Swieten, of Vienna, and Hoffmann, of Halle, Prussian Saxony, many of whom are well known to-day in a general way to students of the history of medicine, but who, nevertheless, in at least a few instances, are worthy of having their careers described in further detail. In the following pages I propose to supply biographical sketches of these men and to show in what respects they exerted a beneficial influence upon the great body of their confrères, and also to what extent they made contributions to the science of medicine in its various branches.

It will undoubtedly surprise some of my readers, as it did me, to learn that during the comparatively barren period of the eighteenth century, to which brief reference has been made on a previous page, there were in Northern and Central Germany several anatomists and biologists who did creditable work as original investigators in these departments of medicine. Of this small number, however, I shall mention here only one—Reil. While he spent the greater part of his life in Germany, he was in reality a native of Holland.