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Among the men who may properly be included in the present class of distinguished German physicians I have no hesitation in naming von Haller and Zimmermann, notwithstanding the fact that both of them were natives of Switzerland—that is, German Switzerland.

ALBRECHT VON HALLER

Albrecht von Haller, whose many contributions to the science of medicine have assured him a permanent and very high position in the temple of fame, was born October 16, 1708, of parents who belonged to two of the old patrician families of Berne, Switzerland. In childhood he suffered from rachitic symptoms and was constantly ailing; but, despite these drawbacks, he manifested at a very early age evidences of possessing to an unusual degree certain intellectual gifts and of having a genuine love for work. Thus, for example, he began—shortly after he had learned to write—recording in alphabetical order all the words that he had been taught and the meaning of which had been explained to him. At the age of ten he prepared for his own use a vocabulary composed of Chaldean, Hebrew and Greek words, and two years later he compiled, from the dictionaries of Moreri and Bayle, a collection of concise biographies of the men who had achieved celebrity in the more important branches of science, and he surprised his teachers by his ability to compose verses in Latin as well as in his native language, German. Before he reached his fifteenth year he had attained considerable distinction, both as an anatomist and as a poet, a combination of gifts extraordinarily rare. He received his early training in anatomy and general medicine at the University of Tübingen, under the guidance of the two Duverneys, father and son, and of Elias Camerarius, all three of whom were professors of considerable celebrity in their respective departments. Jean Guichard Duverney (1691–1759), for example, was the first anatomist to furnish a complete and very thorough description of the solar plexus.