Institutiones medicae, Boerhaave’s first book, represented lectures given by Boerhaave on June 23, 1701; it was soon being used in virtually every medical school in Europe, going though numerous authorized and unauthorized editions and translations. It was one of the earliest modern textbooks of physiology, and was responsible, more than any other work, for establishing the study of physiology as an academic discipline. Boerhaave wrote the work to serve as the textbook for his course in the institutes of medicine, a discipline including pathology, symptoms, hygiene and therapeutics as well as physiology, but he apparently felt that physiology was a neglected subject in the curriculum, as his chapter on it was larger than the other four chapters combined, and the only one to contain footnotes. The Institutiones is also significant as a work of medical bibliography, introducing its readers to the medical literature of the past and present through Boerhaave’s numerous detailed bibliographical citations. Because of its unusually large number of book recommendations, Boerhaave's extremely influential text may have influenced many of his students to collect libraries of the works which he deemed classical and significant. That some books might have been printed a century or more before the lectures were given does not seem to have been a critical issue. Lindeboom, Bibliographia Boerhaaviana (1959) No. 40. Lindeboom lists 50 different editions and translations of this work, including a manuscript translation into Arabic made in 1733.

The work was translated into English by "Mr. Samber" and published in London in 1719 under the following title: A Method of Studying Physick. Containing What a Physician ought to know in Relation to the Nature of Bodies, the Laws of Motion; Staticks, hydrostaticks, Hydraulicks, and the Proprieties of Fluids: Chymistry, Pharmacy and Botany: Osteology, Myology, Splanchnology, Angiology and Dissection: The Theory and Practice of Physick: Physiology, Pathology, Surgery, Diet, &c. And the whole Praxis Medica Interna; with the Names and Characters of the Most excellent Authors on all these several Subjects in every Age: Systematicks, Observators, Operators, & their best Editions, and the method of reading them.  

The Aphorisms represent one of Boerhaave’s best  and most influential works. English translation, 1715.

Upon his appointment as professor of medicine and botany at Leiden University in 1709, Boerhaave became head of the botanical garden, a laboratory for materia medica. He published his first catalogue of plants in the garden in 1710, and added more than two thousand species by the second edition in 1720, reflecting his extensive additions to the garden. Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Boerhaave's syndrome: complete, transmural laceration of the lower part of oesophagus with exit of the gastric content into the mediastinum in the patient with a pre-existing oesophageal disease. This typically occurs after forceful emesis. Boerhaave described this syndrome in the context of a patient he treated in 1723--Baron Jan von Wassenaer, Grand Admiral of the Dutch Fleet and Prefect of Rhineland, who vomited after a meal and developed left-sided chest pain and died 18 hours later. At post mortem the following were found: a tear of the left posterior wall of the oesophagus 5 cm above the diaphragm, emphysema, and food in the left pleural space.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Vesalius's collected works with the famous woodcuts reproduced as copperplate engravings by Jan Wandelaar (1690-1759). Notably Boerhaave and Albinus had this edition published because Vesalius's works still had practical value for physicians early in the 18th century before the application of microscopy to anatomy. Digital facsimile from ECHO, Cultural Heritage Online at this link.

During 1710 Boerhaave lectured on the Methodus discendi medicinam. In 1726 the first edition was published from notes taken at his lectures but without his permission. Lindeboom, Bibliographia Boerhaaviana (1959) No. 91, describes this edition as having 457pp., with one figure, but does not name a publisher. Another edition with 458pp. was issued by J. F. Bernard in Amsterdam, also in 1726, and a third printing appeared in Venice in 1727. As Boerhaave had the habit of constantly citing classic works on various subjects during his lectures, this book served partly as a kind of brief guide to the major literature on the topics it covered. Digital facsimile of the J. F. Bernard edition from Google Books at this link.

Boerhaave was the first to separate out urea from urine, and to do so without adding chemical substances such as alcohol or nitric acid. He first published his method for isolating it in the above work. English translation, London, 1735.

Swammerdam's extensive collection of microscopical observations on insects was written in Dutch, and edited for publication 57 years after Swammerdam's death, with an extensive life of the author, by Herman Boerhaave. By the end of 1679 Swammerdam completed his manuscript, and the illustrations were virtually finished; two plates had been engraved, and the translation from Dutch to Latin was underway. However, Swammerdam’s health took a turn for the worse when his malaria returned. At Swammerdam's death in 1680 the manuscript passed to his friend Melchisédec Thévenot, with a request that the work be published. Unfortunately Thévenot could not meet the request of his dying friend. On Thévenot's death his papers were sold and the manuscript was bought by the King's painter, Joubert; on Joubert's death the manuscript was sold once again. In 1727 Boerhaave acquired the manuscript, but did not complete the editorial process and see the work into print until ten years later. The 2-volume folio work, published in 2-columns, includes a parallel Latin translation by Hieronymus David Gaubius. English translation, with title mistranslated as "Book of Nature" London, 1758. Digital facsimile of the first edition from Google Books at this link.

Boerhaave’s library contained about 3,300 volumes on a wide range of subjects, including many outstanding illustrated works in botany and fine illustrated works on anatomy. As one would have expected, Boerhaave, the editor of a new edition of the writings of Vesalius, owned a first edition of the Fabrica. What one might not have expected was that he also owned all of the rare first editions of Berengario da Carpi, whose anatomical works prior to Vesalius would certainly have had no practical scientific value by the eighteenth century. Boerhaave also owned a fifteenth-century edition of Mondino, confirming that he was a book collector as well as a scholar. At the end of the catalogue is a group of “Libri Prohibiti” including first editions of Spinoza. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Boerhaave created of the modern method of clinical teaching. His writings had an enormous influence during his lifetime. Haller, Cullen, Pringle, van Swieten and de Haen were among his pupils. See Lindeboom, Herman Boerhaave, the man and his work, London: Methuen, 1968.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

A greatly expanded version of Boerhaave's Methodus discendi medicinam (1726), resulting in a text perhaps triple or quadruple its original length.  While Boerhaave frequently cited classic authors in his lectures, Haller added extensive bibliographical lists to each chapter, with some entries annotated, resulting in a subject bibliography of useful works to the student, including many 16th century books. As knowledge did not necessarily progress very rapidly at the time, it is unclear whether Haller regarded works published even two centuries earlier as historical classics, or as still useful for their scientific information, or as both. Lindeboom, Bibliographia Boerhaaviana (1959) No. 98.