The Inner Court of the St Caecilia Hospital in Leiden

The system of medical instruction as we know it today, in which hospitals are central to the training of medical staff, can be traced to Leiden in the 1700s. At the St Caecilia municipal hospital in Leiden physicians developed the practice of bedside teaching, where medical lessons were illustrated with actual cases, a method that caught on quickly and was introduced at teaching hospitals across Europe. Often Hermann Boerhaave is credited with having developed the new teaching method; however, the real champions of the Leiden anatomical theatre and the Caecilia hospital were Paauw, van Horne and Heurnius and, above all, Sylvius, who were among the first to adopt a hands-on approach for the medical curriculum.

A. Rademaker (1675–1735), Vue de la Maison des Insensés se regardant par derrière/Gesigt van het Dol-huys op de binnen plaats; coloured engraving, 1732; source: Museum Boerhaave, Leiden.