Boerhaave to Black: the Evolution of Chemistry Teaching

Abstract

Hermann Boerhaave (1668–1738) at Leiden and Joseph Black (1728–1799) at Edinburgh were known in the eighteenth-century medical world as inspirational and transforming teachers of chemistry. A critical examination of the content of their courses indicates how the idea and uses of chemistry changed through that century. Boerhaave's chemistry was closely allied to the need for training doctors in the materia medica, while for Black, chemistry had become more detached from medicine and could be of industrial relevance and, thereby, of economic benefit. Most of those attending his lectures would not end up as physicians. Both Black and Boerhaave had strongly held views of their pedagogical responsibilities, and neither had aspirations to develop research schools: that idea had to wait until later.