LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



misdirected. A boy not good enough for a preacher 

 might make a good doctor an excess of virtue is not 

 required in the recipe for a physician. 

 " I '11 cure you by taking charge of your boy," said 

 Rothman "you want to make a clergyman of the 

 youth I '11 let him be what he wants to be, a natural- 

 ist and a physician.' 

 And it was so. 



HE year spent by Linnaeus under the roof 

 of Dr. Rothman was a pivotal point in his 

 life. He was eighteen years old. Roth- 

 man's contempt for the refinements of 

 education appealed to the young man. 

 Rothman was blunt, direct and to the 

 point he had a theory that people grew by doing what 

 they wanted to do, not by resisting their impulses. 

 He was friend and comrade to the boy. They rode to- 

 gether, dissected animals and plants, and the young 

 man assisted in operations. Linnaeus had the run of 

 the doctor's library, and without knowing it, was mas- 

 tering physiology. 



" I would adopt him as my son," said Rothman, "but 

 I love him so much that I am going to separate him 

 from me. My roots have struck deep in the soil I am 

 like the human trees told of by Dante, but the boy can 

 go on ! " Jk jfi 



And so Rothman sent him along to the University ol 

 Lund, with letters to another doctor still more cranky 

 40 



