Felix Plater (1536-1614) was a Swiss physician and professor of medicine at the University of Basel for over 50 years. He founded a botanical garden, had an impressive collection pertaining to natural history and was an enthusiastic anatomist. He made the first dissection of the human body in that country. In 1606 he published his main work, Praxeos Medicae and contains his most important works on mental handicap, psychiatry and classification of psychiatric diseases. He proved that subcutaneous ligamentous extensions of the palmar aponeurosis and not the flexor tendons were responsible for Dupuytren's disease. He was the first to describe an intracranial tumor (a meningioma). Platter was the first proponent of the Germ theory of disease. He died at the age of 78.