This detestable calumny owed its rise to an incident, from which no consequence of importance could be possibly apprehended.  As Boerhaave was sitting in a common boat, there arose a conversation among the passengers, upon the impious and pernicious doctrine of Spinosa, which, as they all agreed, tends to the utter overthrow of all religion.  Boerhaave sat, and attended silently to this discourse for some time, till one of the company, willing to distinguish himself by his zeal, instead of confuting the positions of Spinosa by argument, began to give a loose to contumelious language, and virulent invectives, which Boerhaave was so little pleased with, that, at last, he could not forbear asking him, whether he had ever read the author he declaimed against.

The orator, not being able to make much answer, was checked in the midst of his invectives, but not without feeling a secret resentment against the person who had, at once, interrupted his harangue, and exposed his ignorance.

This was observed by a stranger who was in the boat with them; he inquired of his neighbour the name of the young man, whose question had put an end to the discourse, and having learned it, set it down in his pocket-book, as it appears, with a malicious design, for in a few days it was the common conversation at Leyden, that Boerhaave had revolted to Spinosa.

It was in vain that his advocates and friends pleaded his learned and unanswerable confutation of all atheistical opinions, and particularly of the system of Spinosa, in his discourse of the distinction between soul and body.  Such calumnies are not easily suppressed, when they are once become general.  They are kept alive and supported by the malice of bad, and, sometimes, by the zeal of good men, who, though they do not absolutely believe them, think it yet the securest method to keep not only guilty, but suspected men out of publick employments, upon this principle, that the safety of many is to be preferred before the advantage of few.

Boerhaave, finding this formidable opposition raised against his pretensions to ecclesiastical honours or preferments, and even against his design of assuming the character of a divine, thought it neither necessary nor prudent to struggle with the torrent of popular prejudice, as he was equally qualified for a profession, not, indeed, of equal dignity or importance, but which must, undoubtedly, claim the second place among those which are of the greatest benefit to mankind.

He, therefore, applied himself to his medical studies with new ardour and alacrity, reviewed all his former observations and inquiries, and was continually employed in making new acquisitions.

Having now qualified himself for the practice of physick, he began to visit patients, but without that encouragement which others, not equally deserving, have sometimes met with.  His business was, at first, not great, and his circumstances by no means easy; but still, superiour to any discouragement, he continued his search after knowledge, and determined that prosperity, if ever he was to enjoy it, should be the consequence not of mean art, or disingenuous solicitations, but of real merit, and solid learning.