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 leave Strasburg, and having spent some time at Landau, Neustadt, and Worms, he returned to Giessen, where he became as ardent a Pietist as he had previously been an Orthodox. He took his degree, and then, having exhausted his father's funds, took to travelling, and practised medicine and alchemy, occasionally reverting to theology, but now denouncing Protestantism in all its diversities.

Getting to Berlin, and securing the confidence of some wealthy believers, he established a laboratory where he produced this animal oil and, more important still, in trying to imitate a Florentine lake from cochineal, accidentally produced Prussian blue, but did not realise the value of this discovery. He claimed to have succeeded in making gold, and on the strength of his representations was able to get deeply into debt, purchasing, among other luxuries, a castle and estate for fifty thousand florins. In 1707 he was imprisoned for a short time in Berlin, and when he regained his freedom made his way to Amsterdam. He took a medical degree at Leyden, and was acquiring a good medical practice at Amsterdam when his creditors and religious antagonists compelled him to escape from Holland. He went to Altona and then to Hamburg, but was ordered to leave both these cities. Copenhagen was his next home, and there again he suffered imprisonment. He was sent to the Island of Bornholm, where he practised as a physician until he was freed on the instructions of the Queen of Denmark. His medical reputation must have been both wide and high, for in 1727 the King of Sweden who could not get cured of a malady by his own physicians sent for Dippel, who completely succeeded. His troubled life seemed likely now to be exchanged for peace and prosperity, but this was not to be. The king would