During the 17th century, the universities of The Netherlands, and especially that at Leiden, rose to dominate European medical culture. Equipped with an excellent botanical garden and anatomy theatre, established following Italian models in the late 16th century, and with an observatory and chemical laboratory, built in the mid-17th century, Leiden represented the model of the innovative academy. Its clinical course, inaugurated in 1638, was widely seen as a centre of excellence (1). For British observers, furthermore, this status was but one part of the ‘Dutch problem’, the apparently miraculous success of Dutch culture and economy. Natural philosophers joined other analysts in their attention to this issue. William Petty, who had studied medicine in the 1640s at Leiden, Amsterdam and Utrecht, subjected the problem of Dutch supremacy to his new-fangled ‘political anatomy’. While at Leiden he composed both a
History of seven months practise in a chymical laboratory
and also a
Collection of the frugalities of Holland
. Among these ‘frugalities’ he listed ‘equall representation; no gentlemen; divines, physicians and soldiers not the greatest m en; all working; toleration ’. He even cited Dutch power to illustrate the political uses of ridicule: noting that the cheese was the symbol of Holland as the Sun was that of Louis XIV, ‘saying that the Holland cheeze should eclipse the Sun as the Moone doth, would have turn’d the King of France into Ridicule, especially if the success had answer’d ’.
