Herman Boerhaave, Oil on canvas, Cornelis Troost, 1735 Inv P02634

It is hard to exaggerate the influence of Herman Boerhaave on medical education. Even today's courses still contain elements introduced by Boerhaave some three hundred years ago. His nickname of Communis Europae Praeceptor, i.e. teacher of all €pe, is still too modest, since ultimately the whole world was infected with his ideas. At the beginning of the eighteenth century he made the University of Leiden an international intellectual centre. He himself could boast three professorial chairs: botany, clinical education and chemistry.The celebrated painter Cornelis Troost here shows us Boerhaave at the age of 67. This painting - a kind of state portrait for which the professor had donned his gown - has been much copied in various techniques. An etching by Troost himself found so little favour with Herman's family that it had the copperplate destroyed.