Perhaps the most wonderful figure in the whole history of modern medicine is that of Albrecht von Haller, of Berne, born 1708, died 1777, and often known as the Great. No more versatile genius than his has ever adorned our profession. A most precocious child, he developed remarkable abilities in the direction of poetry and music, as well as medicine, and the only wonder is that he lived to such a ripe old age, enjoying the fruits of his labors, having displayed throughout his entire life an industry and productiveness which were most remarkable. Before he reached the age of ten he had written a Chaldee grammar, a Greek and Hebrew vocabulary, and a large collection of Latin verses and biographies. During the next few years he translated many of the Latin authors, and wrote an original epic poem of some four thousand verses on the Swiss Confederacy. All of this work he had completed by the age of twenty-one. It is not strange that among those who knew of his precocity he was generally known and regarded as a "wonder child." It will thus be seen, too, that medicine was but one of the many subjects of his study. He studied a year in Tübingen, where the riotous living of his fellow students repelled him; then he went to Leyden, falling there under the influence of the illustrious Boerhaave. How much he drew from this source no man may accurately say at present, but a more brilliant example he certainly could not have had. He finished his studies in Leyden before he was twenty and then traveled through England and France, but was compelled to flee from Paris to escape arrest for hiding cadavers in his room for purposes of dissection. This will prove an evidence of taste for study if not of taste in other directions.