Felix Platter, the son of Thomas Platter, burgher, printer, schoolmaster, and householder at Basle, was born in 1536. His father by unwearied activity had risen from the greatest poverty, and had up to an advanced age to struggle with anxieties for his maintenance, and with pecuniary embarrassments, in consequence of the constant extension of his business. This hard battle with life had exercised its usual influence on his mind; he had a restless spirit of enterprise, which sometimes hindered him from steadily pursuing a plan; he had no real self-confidence, was easily perplexed, irritable, and morose. His son Felix, the only child by his first marriage, had on the contrary inherited the joyous disposition of his single-minded mother; he was a jolly warm-hearted lad, rather vain, passionately fond of music and dancing, at the same time clever, open and ingenuous. He was still almost a boy when his father sent him from Basle to the celebrated medical college of the university of Montpellier. Felix having acquired there, not only everything that medical science then offered, but all kinds of French refinements, returned to the simple burgher life of his native town: at the age of one-and-twenty he took his degree as doctor, and married happily a maiden about whom he had been teased when a child. He gained a great reputation, became Professor of the university, and a man of opulence and consideration, and died at an advanced age. He was of the greatest service to the city of Basle, by his self-sacrificing activity at the time of the plague, and also to the medical faculty of his university by his learning; and he was often consulted as a physician of renown by persons of princely rank both in Germany and France. He laid out a botanic garden at Basle, and possessed a cabinet of physical science worthy of being shown for money. Like his father, he wrote an account of part of his life: the following fragment is taken from a printed edition of the manuscript, entitled 'Thomas and Felix Platter, two Autobiographies, by Dr. D. A. Fechter, Basle, 1840.' The narrative begins with that day on which the young Felix returns with all the self-confidence of a scholar to his native town. "I was welcomed home by all my neighbours, and there was great rejoicing; the servant-maid of the midwife, Dorly Becherer, as I learnt afterwards, gained the _botenbrot_[53] from my intended, by running to her father's house and screaming out the news, which she did so loud as quite to frighten her. Supper was prepared, and some of my companions who had heard of my arrival, and had forthwith come to visit me, stayed for it. After supper we escorted them to the Crown inn, and going down the Freienstrasse, my intended saw me passing by in my Spanish cap, and she fled. The innkeeper, who had himself been wooing her, bantered me, so that I perceived the affair was pretty well known: after that I returned home.