20 
LINNAEUS 
to neglect to inscribe themselves in any Nation. 
Linnaeus found a special reason for this, namely, that 
he had already, on his arrival, come to the determina¬ 
tion not to stay more than a year, so that he held it 
unnecessary to “ go penal,” and to devote himself to 
any Nation, as he was impartial. Probably he calcu¬ 
lated that when he inscribed himself in Sm^land's 
Nation at Uppsala, he would be regarded as a senior 
student, and thus escape having to “ go penal,” an 
idea which proved correct. 
Besides this it was soon seen that the young 
student had miscalculated. Shortly before his arrival 
at Lund, Dean Humerus died, and thereby his not 
groundless hopes of help from his relation were 
frustrated. Samuel Linnaeus relates that “ when 
Carl came to the town gate of Lund, all the bells 
were tolling. He asked someone the cause of this 
and was answered ‘ For Professor Humerus/ ” Not 
less was the hope dashed—which he had hitherto 
cherished—that he would find competent and zealous 
professors in medicine and botany. In the latter 
subject he found then no academic professor, and 
the whole medical faculty was carried on by a single 
man, the previously named Johan Jacob von Dobeln, 
who was both learned and experienced, but who, as 
he himself declared, “ could not procure the new 
things which he required, because there were no 
means provided for the support of the study of 
medicine, nor for Anatomy, Botany or Chemistry.” 
He probably too, as the result of age, when Linnaeus 
was residing in Lund, had already lost somewhat of 
his former strength, whereby he seems to have given 
too little regard to private practice and academic 
objects. Naturally, Linnaeus attended his lectures, in 
the autumn term of 1727, on miscellaneous topics, also 
in the spring term of 1728, the subject being then the 
“ Physics ” of Budaeus. 
Fortunately there was at that time in Lund a man 
whose great services to medicine and natural history 
