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“... One​ morning in October 1552, Felix Platter left his hometown of Basel for Montpellier, where he was to study medicine. He was fifteen years old. Things started to happen to him, and he wrote them down in his Tagebuch, his daybook. When Felix was an old man – an important physician and intellectual in Basel – he reworked that teenage diary into a longer memoir, filling in his earliest childhood memories, as well as more sombre reflections on his adult achievements and disappointments ...”

“... assured place in a Protestant society and culture, but that they told the story at all. Thomas Platter, the father, was persuaded by his son to record his memoirs; Felix, the son, kept a diary in which he recorded not only his achievements but, more important, the minutiae of his life. The result is a picture of ...”

“... entity – but Harvey’s Latin was, unfortunately for human welfare, not as good as Wootton’s. Felix Platter was another anticipator, formulating in the late 16th century ‘a sophisticated germ theory of contagion’ avant la lettre, but his work too has been shamefully neglected by historians. This ‘can only be’ because, Wootton bizarrely ...”

“... are the observations of another scholar who examined the Gonzales family at around the same time. Felix Platter’s steep ascent from shepherd’s grandson to city physician attests to the surprisingly well-oiled machinery for social mobility in 16th-century Switzerland. At medical school his idea of student high jinks was to rob a graveyard and dissect ...”