Hindu Medicine c5.s1.1

c5.s1.1

I happened to make Zimmer's acquaintance in the early summer of 1924, an especially happy and important phase of his life: he was just beginning to come into his own. His earlier biography can be briefly told. Born in Greifswald in 1890, he attended school there and in Berlin; from 1909 until 1913 he studied at the University of Berlin. After having taken his degree in 1913, he underwent his one-year military training and stayed on in the army throughout the first World War. Discharged in December 1918, he resumed his work and became Privatdozent in Greifswald in 1920. In 1922 he moved to Heidelberg. Here at last he was able to carry out the decision which he had made on his return from the war—"free as a guest from the other world"—namely, to abandon completely the traditional pattern of interpretation that he had followed, however reluctantly, in his youth and to give expression to his own vision of India. In 1924 his first book was in print and he was working