ABSTRACT
Felix and Thomas Platter are known to early modern historians far beyond the German-speaking regions. Felix, whose three older sisters1 died in Basle plague epidemics, was the much-loved only surviving child of Thomas Platter the Elder’s marriage to Anna Dietschi, the housemaid of his mentor, the Zurich humanist Oswald Myconius.2 Thomas was one of six children from the second marriage Platter the Elder entered into when it seemed clear that Felix would remain childless.3 Raised in great poverty in the rural Alpine Valais and effectively educated only in his twenties by Myconius and other mentors, Platter the Elder converted to Lutheranism and established himself as a Humanist in Basle. Here he ran a printing press and, with Anna Dietschi, a boarding house for local scholars and students. From the 1530s to 1578 he was also a teacher of ancient languages, then head teacher at the Münsterplatz grammar school. Felix Platter was born in Basle, studied medicine at the universities of Basle and Montpellier, and toured Europe before returning home to marry, set up his own practice and take the posts of Basle’s public health officer, professor of medicine, dean of the medical school and vice-chancellor of Basle University. All these stages were mirrored some four decades later by his half-brother Thomas.4
