1709 - Medicine

Medicine

The Black Death kills 300,000 in Prussia.

Aphorismi de Cognoscendis et Curandis Morbis by University of Leyden medicine and botany professor Hermann Boerhaave, 41, revives the Hippocratic method of the 5th century B.C., emphasizing that medicine's principal aim is to cure the patient. The leading medical technician and clinician of his day, Boerhaave makes observations from the bedside rather than from textbooks. His slim but encyclopaedic medical text will be translated into many European languages as will his Institutiones medicae in usus annuae exercitationis domesticos digestae of last year; patients from all over Europe will come to consult with him at Leyden, and he will reap a fortune, but like most others he has erroneous ideas about diseases of the solid parts as opposed to diseases of the so-called "humors."