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
the compliments of form, the ladies withdrew, and left them to private
conversation; when Boerhaave took occasion to tell him what had been,
during his illness, the chief subject of his thoughts.
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