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193 
and that he was accustomed to speak it, was known 
from the fact that he had passed through Vaxjo 
Gymnasium and had been heard to “ oppose ” at 
Uppsala. The Consistory admitted their forgetfulness 
of a clause in the Constitution, and finally consented 
that proof should not be asked of Dr. Linnaeus. 
As a result of this correspondence the King 
declared that Linnseus should be freed from what the 
Consistory demanded of him, but other applicants 
must submit theses. Consequently, not only was 
Wallerius to furnish a thesis, but also the recently 
promoted Dr. Abraham Back, who now, at the eleventh 
hour, announced himself as an applicant. 
What the Consistory really thought about their 
shifty procedure, cannot now be determined, but it 
soon became manifest that an attempt was being 
made to shut out Linnaeus from the coveted post. 
To obviate this, at the end of 1740 or beginning of 
1741, he printed a small tract entitled “ Orbis eruditi 
judicium de Car. Linnaei, M.D., scriptis ” (The judg¬ 
ment of the learned world on the writings of C. L.). 
In this he collected the judgments of many of the 
most eminent naturalists, prefixing a short history of 
his life, and a list (twenty-one in all) of the writings 
he had published. Amongst the witnesses quoted 
were Boerhaave, Sloane, Albert von Haller, and Ant. 
de Jussieu; altogether there were five Germans, five 
Netherlanders, two Swiss, four French, and as many 
English, their praise not being scanty, nor stinted. 
This small tract became a sharp weapon, of which 
Linnaeus and his friends made good use; without it, 
possibly Uppsala University might have lost the 
honour of numbering him among its teachers. 
In February, 1741, Wallerius gave in his material 
for his thesis, but rumours began to circulate as to 
the contents, that they were simply an attack upon 
Linnaeus. Rosen, as the only member of the medical 
faculty, had passed the thesis, and remarked that 
although it upset Dr. Linnaeus’s works, he did not 
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