AT STOCKHOLM 
175 
improved, so that his answer was really a refusal, but 
full of gratitude to the renowned man, who showed 
such proofs of regard and kindness. “ It is impossible 
to express in words my gratitude, but so long as I 
live, your name will always be cherished.” 
Several months thus passed, without any real 
improvement in his prospects. Only one encourage¬ 
ment occurred, on the 27th September he was chosen 
a member of the Scientific Society of Uppsala. 
“ Laudatur et alget ”—he is praised but starved—■ 
being an utterance he frequently employed at that 
time. 
As patients did not seek him, he determined 
to seek them. He began to frequent the quarters 
of the city where he saw young fellows suffering from 
chest complaints and indulgence in fast living, sad 
and depressed. He exhorted them to be of good 
courage and drink a measure of Rhine wine, assuring 
them that he could cure them in a fortnight. When 
two of them, who had consulted physicians without 
success, ventured to entrust their case in his hands, he 
cured them at once. To their comrades’ amazement 
they began again to enjoy their wine, declaring that 
Linnaeus was an eminently skilful practitioner; con¬ 
sequently in a month’s time he had most of them 
under his care. His credit then rose in cases of 
epidemic, small-pox and agues, the result being that 
he gained such an extensive practice, that he was busy 
from seven in the morning to eight at night, with 
hardly time to eat. “ This augments my purse, but 
takes up all my time, so that I have not an hour for 
my best friends ”; and in the new year he recorded 
that he had each day from forty to sixty patients. 
This fame as a skilful physician, particularly in 
chest disorders, was not without an important influ¬ 
ence on Linnaeus’s future. “Among his patients was 
a court lady who suffered from an irritating and 
obstinate cough, and for its relief was ordered pills 
of tragac^nth which she was to have at hand to use 
