no opportunity of collecting testimonies, or distinguishing
between those accounts which are well proved, and those which owe
their rise to fiction and credulity.

Yet I cannot but implore, with the greatest earnestness, such as have
been conversant with this great man, that they will not so far neglect
the common interest of mankind, as to suffer any of these
circumstances to be lost to posterity. Men are generally idle, and
ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by
calling that impossible which is only difficult. The skill to which
Boerhaave attained, by a long and unwearied observation of nature,
ought, therefore, to be transmitted, in all its particulars, to future
ages, that his successors may be ashamed to fall below him, and that
none may hereafter excuse his ignorance, by pleading the impossibility
of clearer knowledge.

Yet so far was this great master from presumptuous confidence in his
abilities, that, in his examinations of the sick, he was remarkably
circumstantial and particular. He well knew that the originals of
distempers are often at a distance from their visible effects; that to
conjecture, where certainty may be obtained, is either vanity or
negligence; and that life is not to be sacrificed, either to an
affectation of quick discernment, or of crowded practice, but may be
required, if trifled away, at the hand of the physician.

About the middle of the year 1737, he felt the first approaches of
that fatal illness that brought him to the grave, of which we have
inserted an account, written by himself, Sept. 8, 1738, to a friend at
London [38]; which deserves not only to be preserved, as an historical
relation of the disease which deprived us of so great a man, but as a
proof of his piety and resignation to the divine will.

In this last illness, which was, to the last degree, lingering,
painful, and afflictive, his constancy and firmness did not forsake
him. He neither intermitted the necessary cares of life, nor forgot
the proper preparations for death. Though dejection and lowness of
spirits was, as he himself tells us, part of his distemper, yet even
this, in some measure, gave way to that vigour, which the soul
receives from a consciousness of innocence.

About three weeks before his death he received a visit, at his country
house, from the reverend Mr. Schultens, his intimate friend, who found
him sitting without-door, with his wife, sister, and daughter: after