EARLY STUDENT YEARS 
27 
ships, royal or patronal, by which a clever but needy 
student of medicine could progress.” From what 
follows, we shall find that Rothman by this advice 
made himself responsible for the belief, that he 
regarded the then existing University’s circumstances 
as similar to those during his own life as student. 
During the twenty years which had passed since he 
left Uppsala, they had greatly changed, and certainly 
not for the better. 
The professors in the medical faculty were two, 
Olof Rudbeck the younger, and Lars Roberg, both 
without doubt very distinguished, learned and experi¬ 
enced men. Since being appointed, they had between 
themselves so divided the duties which were then 
looked upon as belonging to that faculty, that the 
former undertook anatomy, botany, zoology and 
pharmacology, while the latter took up theoretic and 
practical medicine, surgery, physiology and chemistry. 
Rudbeck was the senior, both in age and service, and 
was then sixty-eight years old. In his strength, he 
had been both a zealous and distinguished teacher. 
During his travels in and outside his fatherland— 
especially in his journey to Lule Lapland undertaken 
in 1695—he had amassed extremely valuable botanic 
and zoological collections, with accurate reports. In 
collaboration with his father, Olof Rudbeck the elder, 
on the great botanic work “ Campus Elysii,” he had 
been both a zealous and skilful partner, and his 
father’s intention was that he should, after his death, 
continue its publication. By this he would have 
obtained, without doubt, a very distinguished place 
for all time amongst the pre-Linnean botanists. 
Unfortunately in 1702 there occurred the great and 
destructive fire in Uppsala, which destroyed the 
greater part of his collections and notes, also most of 
the copies of the two volumes of “ Campus Elysii,” 
then printed, with the many thousand woodcuts pre¬ 
pared for its continuation. It is no wonder that 
through these disasters his manifest interest in natural 
