96 
LINNAEUS 
A Swede drinks like a German; 
„ smokes like a Dutchman; 
,, takes brandy like a Russian. 
It cannot escape notice on reading through the 
introduction that it bears the stamp of dejection and 
bitterness. That he actually cherished such feelings, 
is plain from his own notes written at this time. 
Although his economic condition was not pressing, 
one may take the end of the spring term of 1734 as 
the most anxious period of his richly varied joys and 
troubles. 
The reasons for this seem to have been many. 
One of the weightiest was certainly the doubt and 
unrest concerning the future which awaited him. 
He could not avoid the thought that the years were 
passing, thus diminishing his joy in study. He was 
now twenty-seven years of age, and had been seven 
years a student. It was his constant desire to remain 
at Uppsala as a teacher, but doubted whether to aim 
at this object or to earn his living as a practising 
physician. In this latter profession there remained the 
obstacle that he had not passed any examination, nor 
had he been promoted Doctor of Medicine. That he 
had latterly considered the matter, appears from his 
thesis written in August 1733, in which was put for¬ 
ward a new hypothesis as to the cause of intermittent 
fevers. He afterwards used this thesis in Holland 
in 1735 for winning the doctorate. According to law, 
this should have been obtainable in Sweden, where 
the academic statutes permitted both Uppsala and 
Lund to set up doctor’s promotion, but of old the idea 
had established itself in Sweden that only in a foreign 
land was the doctorate valid. It was therefore an 
urgent necessity for him to undertake a journey 
abroad, perhaps lasting some years, so as to prosecute 
his medical studies and provide himself with a 
diploma as Doctor of Medicine. 
There was also another reason why Linnaeus 
