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 time in studying the medical classics, though he valued them from an historical standpoint rather than from an authoritative standpoint. It would almost seem that the great task of Boerhaave's life a combination of ancient and modern medicine, could not be of any real permanent value, and the same might be said of his Aphorisms, in which he gave a summary of the results of his long experience. And yet it is an indisputable fact that his contributions to the science of medicine form one of the necessary factors in the construction of modern medicine." * * * * *