Background
Van Beuren was born in Amsterdam and came to New York at the age of twenty-two.
Van Beuren was born in Amsterdam and came to New York at the age of twenty-two.
Van Beuren had been a student of the renowned Dutch physician Hermannus Boerhaave, who had made the medical department of the University of Leyden famous throughout Europe.
With this training he soon established a large practice in New York, where few of the so-called physicians had ever seen the inside of a medical school.
After practicing in New York for more than twenty years, Van Beuren removed about 1724 to Flatbush, Long Island, and lived there until 1728, when he returned to New York. In 1736, an almshouse, known as the "Publick Workhouse and House of Correction, " was built on the site of the present City Hall.
The hospital department was a room about twenty-five feet square on the second floor, containing six beds, and Van Beuren, through the influence of the governor of the colony it is said, was appointed its first medical director. He held the position until his death. This was the beginning of Bellevue Hospital, which may lay claim to being the oldest hospital in the United States.
Van Beuren was married at New York, on June 15, 1707, to Maria Meyer, the daughter of Pieter Meyer and his wife, Batje Jans, of New York. They had fifteen children. His marriage and the baptisms of all but two of the children are recorded in the register of the Dutch Church.
Five of his sons were physicians, and one of them, Beekman Van Beuren, who was the physician at the almshouse from 1765 to 1776, is credited with the introduction of inoculation for smallpox in the public institutions of the city. William Holme Van Buren was a descendant.