Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738): Calvinist Chemist and Physician (review)

This book is part of a new series on the "History of Science and Scholarship in the Netherlands," published by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Rina Knoeff has produced the first biography of Boerhaave since Gerrit Lindeboom's of 1968. Based on her Cambridge Ph.D. dissertation, this work is intended to be a revisionist view, a product of a very different set of historical priorities than prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s. As a student of Andrew Cunningham, Knoeff, not surprisingly, places religion at the center of Boerhaave's career; her main argument is that he cannot be understood as a man of his time without acknowledging this centrality of religion, and notably the particular Calvinism of the Dutch, to his life.

Knoeff focuses on Boerhaave's natural philosophy, and particularly his chemical ideas. She discusses medicine insofar as it forms an expression of his chemistry, but we hear little of his medical practice and almost nothing of his clinical teaching at the University of Leiden, where he served simultaneously as professor of botany, chemistry, and medical practice. Thus this is very much an intellectual biography, although Knoeff devotes some attention to Boerhaave's social setting in order to establish his intellectual influences.

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of Knoeff's account is her detailed exposition of the intellectual setting of the Netherlands in the late seventeenth century. Although much has been written of the Dutch "Golden Age," Knoeff adds significantly to this historiography in her analysis of Dutch Calvinism and how it fit into the larger picture of intellectual life. This analysis is a corrective to those who have viewed Dutch toleration as signaling the relative insignificance of religion in this era. Moreover, Knoeff usefully distinguishes Dutch Calvinism from its English Puritan counterpart, noting that the Puritan notion of reestablishing Adam's dominion over nature did not form a part of Dutch theology.

Despite a lack of direct evidence—Boerhaave did not write anything approaching a declaration of faith until late in his life—Knoeff convincingly argues that Calvinism shaped his lifestyle as well as his style of natural philosophy. Boerhaave's Calvinism allowed him to reject the Cartesian mind-body dualism and to accept Newton's natural philosophy, which was based ultimately on the providence and intelligence of God. Knoeff also finds the influence of both Spinoza and Swammerdam on Boerhaave's intellectual development.

Knoeff's thorough analysis of Boerhaave's chemical theories follows current historiography in emphasizing the importance of alchemy for the development of chemistry. Unfortunately, most of Boerhaave's alchemical manuscripts are in St. Petersburg and remain inaccessible to researchers (in her introduction, Knoeff describes her frustrating experience in St. Petersburg, where she was allowed to look at the manuscripts for only a few hours). She places Boerhaave solidly within the Newtonian/mechanist tradition while acknowledging some substantial differences, particularly with Newton's notion of short-range attraction. Her account of his medical chemistry interestingly argues that he employed mechanism as a heuristic device but ascribed ultimate causes to God.

Knoeff offers a new and different view of Boerhaave: a deeply religious man whose main concern was natural philosophy. While more remains to be done to integrate this view with Boerhaave the physician, Knoeff has written a valuable biography which, while not entirely supplanting Lindeboom's, supplements it in important ways. The book itself is well produced, with a thorough bibliography, and the series as a whole provides a welcome addition to the historiography.