Czechoslovak Medical Students at Oxford

Abstract

THE conferment of degrees of Czechoslovak universities on a group of medical graduands at Oxford on February 27¹—spectaculum tam novum tamque magnum—may serve to recall the almost forgotten name of Daniel Stolczius Cuttenus, of the family of Pardubšti, domiciled formerly at Kutná Hora in Bohemia. This student-poet of alchemy graduated at Prague hi 1618, and five years later published a remarkable alchemical work, “Viridarium Chymicum” (“Pleasure Garden of Chymistry”), consisting of a collection of 107 copper-engravings, each provided with a Lathi epigram. Although Stolczius does not appear to have become a member of the University of Oxford, he dated the dedication of the “Viridarium” from Oxford, July 6/16, 1623, and in it he wrote : “In this my journey abroad, undertaken in the cause of Medicine . . . I hear with grief of the strange and pitiable disasters of my country, and am, to my extreme sorrow, very often interrupted by these tumults of war that are scattered everywhere”. It is interesting to find this link between Prague, Oxford, and medical studies, at the outset of the Thirty Years' War.