TIIE HISTORY OF VETERINARY MEDICINE. 249 



is not, however, inappropriate to the subject of this book to give a 

 short sketch of the life of a man who lias wielded such a mighty 

 intellectual influence in the world's progress. 



"Albert von Haller * was born at Bern, Switzerland, in 1708, and 

 in early youth demonstrated a systematic spirit and a strong scien- 

 tific tendency. He began to make for himself a private dictionary 

 as soon as he was able to write, in which he entered all words hith- 

 erto unknown to him, with their meanings. He also made a dic- 

 tionary of a similar character as soon as he began the study of for- 

 eign languages, and when lie began the study of history he followed 

 the same course. He often said that in his later years he found 

 valuable information in these works of his youthful days. When 

 ten years old he had already shown his taste for poetry by writing 

 ludicrous verses about his teachers, his poetic talent at this time 

 having a special bent to satire, which he, however, entirely gave up 

 in later years. In 1723, when he was fifteen years old, he went to 

 the University of Tubingen, to study medicine under Duvernoi and 

 Camerarius. In the next year he wrote a polemic against an ana- 

 tomical assertion of Professor Coshwitz at Halle. He did not re- 

 main long at Tubingen, as he, with other students, had made a 

 shepherd so drunk w T ith high- wine (Branntwein) that the latter lost 

 his life. In 1725 he removed to Leyden, to study under the guid- 

 ance of the immortal Boerhaave. At eighteen years of age he ac- 

 quired his degree of doctor of medicine, visited England and France, 

 but had to flee from Paris, because it was found that he had made 

 dissections of human bodies at his residence. From Paris he went 

 to Basel and studied mathematics under Bernoulli ; but in 1729 he 

 returned to the place of his nativity, Bern, in order to practice his 

 profession ; at the same time he studied botany with great earnest- 

 ness. In 1731 he became director of the hospitals of his city, and 

 also had an amphitheatre built in which he gave anatomical lectures. 

 Most of his poems were written at this time. In 1735 he had con- 

 trol of the City Library, which he himself used with the greatest 

 diligence. In 1736 he was called to Gottingen as Professor of Anat- 

 omy, Chemistry, and Botany ; he also explained the ' Institutions ' of 

 his master, Boerhaave, which he himself published with commentaries 

 in 1739. At this period he still busied himself with botany, and pub- 

 lished several works of classical importance upon the subject ; he 

 also wrote a large number of important anatomical papers, besides 

 publishing an atlas of anatomy. But it is for his contributions to 

 physiology that Haller is as much noted as for any other of his mani- 



* "Geschichte d. Medicin," Wunderlich, Stuttgart, 1859. 



