LANDMARKS OP BOTANICAL HISTORY GREENE 



193 



fourteen and eighteen years, he was master of a private school in 

 his native town; to the success of which undertaking on the part 

 of one who was a mere boy in years, a precociously large stature, 

 quiet seriousness of mind, and a manly dignity of bearing are said 

 to have contributed. 1 At the age of eighteen he again left home, 

 and this time to enter the university at Ingolstadt, where at first 

 he applied himself to advanced classical studies, and two years later 

 obtained the degree of Master of Philosophy. Entering at once 

 upon the .study^ofmedicine at the same institution he won the 

 doctorate in the year 1524, at the age of twentyrthree. He under- 

 took to establish himself in the practice of medicine atJMunicb; but 

 after a residence there of some two years, within which time he 

 had married, he was called to the Professorship of Medicine at 

 Ingolstadt. Here another and more honorable place was soon 

 tendered him, and he became physician to the Margrave George of 

 Brandenburg. During an outbreak, at Anspach, the residence 

 of this prince, of that very fatal epidemic which one reads of as 

 the plague, Fuchsius acquired reputation by the success that at- 

 tended his treatment of the disease. He remained physician to 

 George of Brandenburg some five years, and it was during this 

 period that his career as an author began. He published a Com- 

 pend of Medicine, then a translation from the Greek of one of the 

 books of Hippoc xates . He was now called a second time to the 

 Chair of Medicine at Ingolstadt. The call was accepted: but again 

 the stay was short. This university still remained one of the strong- 

 holds of the old faith. Doctor Fuchsius let fall expressions of 

 sympathy with Luther's movement. Within less than a year 

 he withdrew, returned to Anspach, where the Margrave George gave 

 him welcome, and reappointed him body physician. The next 

 year witnessed another outbreak of the plague, and this time 

 Doctor Fuchsius with his wife and children fled the place. 



In the year 1535 he received a call to the Chair of Medicine in the 

 then newly established Protestant university of Tubingen. Here 

 he remained to the end of his life, that is, for thirty-one years ; and 

 they appear to have been years of the most ardu^us~anil unremitting 

 activity. His lectures on medicine were extraordinarily popular, 

 and the intervals between lectures were occupied by the duties of 

 the practitioner. He declined one offer of a professorship in the 

 celebrated University of Pisa, and another to the o.ffice of Physician 

 to the King of Denmark. ^ 



- Melchjor Adam, Vit<B Germanorum Medicorum. 

 2 Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, vol. iv, p. 311. 



