Dr. Herman Boerhaave was born on the last day of December, 1668, about one in the morning, at Voorhout, a village two miles distant from Leyden: his father, James Boerhaave, was minister of Voorhout, of whom his son [34], in a small account of his own life, has given a very amiable character, for the simplicity and openness of his behaviour, for his exact frugality in the management of a narrow fortune, and the prudence, tenderness, and diligence, with which he educated a numerous family of nine children: he was eminently skilled in history and genealogy, and versed in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages.
His mother was Hagar Daelder, a tradesman's daughter of Amsterdam, from whom he might, perhaps, derive an hereditary inclination to the study of physick, in which she was very inquisitive, and had obtained a knowledge of it, not common in female students.
This knowledge, however, she did not live to communicate to her son; for she died, in 1673, ten years after her marriage.
His father, finding himself encumbered with the care of seven children, thought it necessary to take a second wife, and in July, 1674, was married to Eve du Bois, daughter of a minister of Leyden, who, by her prudent and impartial conduct, so endeared herself to her husband's children, that they all regarded her as their own mother.
Herman Boerhaave was always designed, by his father, for the ministry, and, with that view, instructed by him in grammatical learning, and the first elements of languages; in which he made such a proficiency, that he was, at the age of eleven years, not only master of the rules of grammar, but capable of translating with tolerable accuracy, and not wholly ignorant of critical niceties.
At intervals, to recreate his mind and strengthen his constitution, it was his father's custom to send him into the fields, and employ him in agriculture, and such kind of rural occupations, which he continued, through all his life, to love and practise; and, by this vicissitude of study and exercise, preserved himself, in a great measure, from those distempers and depressions, which are frequently the consequences of indiscreet diligence and uninterrupted application; and from which students, not well acquainted with the constitution of the human body, sometimes fly for relief, to wine instead of exercise, and purchase temporary ease, by the hazard of the most dreadful consequences.