EARLY STUDENT YEARS 
31 
This is not the place to set out all the reports given 
for many years in the Minutes of the Consistory; 
enough to show that no clinical teaching was avail¬ 
able for medical aspirants; neither was it promised, 
being entirely excluded from the syllabus of 1728, 
and not reappearing during Roberg’s remaining pro¬ 
fessorial career. 
The want of the requisites might have been less felt 
if the medical students had opportunities under the 
professor’s guidance of visiting patients in their own 
homes, a method of teaching which Roberg should in 
some measure have employed. There was nothing 
of this during Linnaeus’s student life, either because 
Roberg tired of it, or the patients were tired of him, 
by reason of his increasing covetousness, or his 
summary orders. 
It was no better as regards the botanic garden, 
which, wrecked in the fire of 1702, had never since 
been even in a decent state. Certainly Rudbeck and 
his colleague Roberg did what they could; both of 
them possessing knowledge of, and interest in, botany, 
but attempts to improve matters ended unsuccess¬ 
fully. Thereupon ensued Rudbeck’s practically 
complete transition from botany to philology, as 
previously mentioned. When it concerned the 
gardener “ that he need not have skill in dressing the 
garden as is usual, and soberly not to neglect his 
duty,” it is not surprising that Linnaeus soon after his 
arrival at Uppsala, lamented at the state of the 
garden, “ which declines daily, so that now hardly 
200 species are to be found in the whole place, and 
not more than 100 rarities.” Soon after, Professor 
Roberg begged that the Consistory would think about 
the botanic garden, which was then in ruins; they 
admitted as usual that the business was urgent, but 
there it ended. 
The conditions as regards anatomy were still more 
unsatisfactory, and the requirements of the time for 
a hall of anatomy had to be met by the younger Olof 
