He often used to say, what will make many a practitioner in physic tremble, that the life of a patient (if trifled with or neglected), would one day be required at the hand of the physician. He used to call the poor his best patients, nobly observing, that God would be their paymaster; the lustre of his eyes bespoke the activity and vivacity of his mind. He was always cheerful and desirous of promoting every valuable end of conversation. He disregarded calumny and detraction; for even Boerhaave had enemies, and never troubled himself to confute them. “They are sparks,” said he, “which, if you do not blow, will go out of themselves. The surest remedy against scandal is to _live it down_, by a perseverance in well doing; and by praying to God that he would cure the distempered minds of those who traduce and injure us.” He was never over-awed by the magnificence or presence of great men, but boldly persisted in proceeding in what he considered to be right, and left the consequence to God. He was enabled, with unexampled celerity and acuteness, to penetrate into the tempers and characters of persons at a glance of his eye. A friend, one day, who had often admired his patience under great provocations, asked him, if he ever knew what it was to be angry? to which Boerhaave replied with the most perfect frankness, “that he was naturally quick of resentment; but, that by prayer and meditation, he had obtained complete mastery over his passions; this he attributed, as he did every good thought, and every laudable action, to his God.” About the middle of the year 1737, he felt the first approaches of that indisposition which was destined to bring him to his grave, viz. a disorder in his breast, which was occasionally very painful, often threatened him with immediate suffocation, and finally terminated in an universal dropsy: during all the anguish which he suffered, his placid temper and firmness of mind never forsook him; he attended at once to the ordinary duties of life as if in full health, and prepared for that death which his skill and experience enabled him to know was not very distant.