Suddenly developing a passion for mathematics, he went to Basle and worked so hard as to almost ruin his health. This necessitated a trip to the mountains and here his interest in botany was aroused and indirectly that in medicine continued. Soon after he returned to Berne to take up the practice of medicine. Here he studied and worked so hard as to arouse a suspicion of his sanity, but he kept up his health by frequent trips to the Alps in search of flowers. His fondness for botany and his taste for poetry seemed to grow with equal pace and he seems to have been among the first of modern students to appreciate the beauty and grandeur of Swiss mountain scenery. When he was twenty-five years of age appeared the first edition of his poems, many editions appearing later. Here in Berne also he published so many essays on botany, anatomy and physiology that widespread attention was attracted to his eminent learning, and he was called to fill the chair of anatomy and botany in the new university of Göttingen, where he spent seventeen years of extraordinary mental activity, publishing countless papers and at the same time continuing his poetic and his nomadic habits. He established in Göttingen a great botanic garden, founded scientific societies, published five books on anatomy, all elaborately illustrated, printed a series of commentaries on Boerhaave's lectures, and is said to have contributed altogether thirteen thousand articles relating to almost every branch of human knowledge. It is not strange that the fame of the University of Göttingen depended largely upon Haller's reputation.