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History never feels so true as when told by those having experienced it themselves. By chance we found the diary of a doctor, living around the turn of the 17th century. Dr Michiel Korsten was born in 1666 in a small Flemish village and kept a diary from 1702 until his death in 1732 at age 66. You will look in vain for intellectual contents in his notes. In contrast, this “bourgeois” man described trifling events and small talk about the middle class and the clergy of the town where he lived. He appeared to have a special interest in clothes and wine and punctiliously noted expenses for his wigs, his jackets, or liquor. More interesting for the medical reader, are his writings about his personal health problems: “podagra” (gout), “sciatica” (degenerative spine disease), and kidney stones. Being a patient and a doctor at the same time, he described quite precisely the symptoms and the treatments he used.
SYNTAXIS ET POETICA
The diary starts with memories of his medical education. After having finished “Grammatica, Syntaxis et Poetica” at the school of the Jesuits in Liege, he first followed an additional course “Logica et Physica”. In 1690, at the age of 24 years, he started to study medicine at Leiden University in Holland. At that time Leiden housed one of the most famous faculties of medicine in Europe. Young Michiel Korsten stayed there at Mr Van Velthoven's home, a rich merchant from his own native village. For board and lodging he paid 200 guilders a year. The courses in medicine he attended were for the greater part private and were given at the professor's house. According to his diary he had to pay 40 guilders a year for chemistry, 20 guilders “to be tought about herbs”, 20 guilders for “anatomy and to watch separation …