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An incident which occurred during his student days at Tübingen reveals so strikingly von Haller’s strength of purpose and his unwillingness to permit anything to divert him from the path which he had decided to follow, that I shall not hesitate to relate it briefly here. In company with a few of his fellow students he participated in one of those beer-drinking bouts which are of such frequent occurrence in German university towns, and was in due course of time made acquainted with the legitimate effects that follow such excessive indulgence—effects that are felt as “seediness” and a sense of physical misery (symptoms to which the Germans have given the striking but untranslatable name of Katzenjammer). This single experience sufficed to impress upon von Haller’s mind the folly of such indulgence and he never afterward permitted himself to take part in an excess of this nature.

Although von Haller, upon the death of his father, had been left with very slender financial means, he managed, under the guidance of Albinus, on leaving Tübingen in 1725, to visit Leyden, in Holland, where he was able to prosecute his anatomical researches and at the same time to follow the instruction of Boerhaave, who was still at that period in full possession of his powers as a teacher. Extraordinary as it will appear to the physicians of to-day, von Haller, when only nineteen years old, passed successfully the required examinations at Leyden and was given the degree of Doctor of Medicine (1727).