in Catholic countries, has been attributed to its satisfaction of a need (relative to Catholic doctrine) for "a safe synthesis of ancient and modern". After 1670, even many Jesuit writers only thinly disguised their Copernicanism. But in Germany, the Netherlands, and England, the Tychonic system "vanished from the literature much earlier". James Bradley's discovery of stellar aberration, published in 1729, eventually gave direct evidence excluding the possibility of all forms of geocentrism including Tycho's. Stellar aberration could only be satisfactorily explained on the basis that the Earth is in annual orbit around the Sun, with an orbital velocity that combines with the finite speed of the light coming from an observed star or planet, to affect the apparent direction of the body observed. Work in medicine, alchemy and astrology Tycho worked in medicine and alchemy. He was influenced by the Swiss physician Paracelsus, who considered the human body to be directly affected by celestial bodies.. Tycho used Paracelsus's ideas to connect empiricism and natural science, and religion and astrology. Using his herbal garden at Uraniborg, Tycho produced recipes for herbal medicines, and used them to treat fever and plague; his herbal medicines were in use until the end of the 19th century. The expression Tycho Brahe days referred to "unlucky days" that were featured in almanacs from the 1700s onwards, but which have no direct connection to Tycho or his work. Whether because Tycho realized that astrology was not an empirical science, or because he feared religious repercussions, he did not publicise his own astrological work. For example, two of his more astrological treatises, one on weather predictions and an almanac, were published in the names of his assistants, in spite of the fact that he worked on them personally. Some scholars have argued that he lost faith in horoscope astrology over the course of his career, and others that he simply changed his public communication on the topic as he realized that connections with astrology could influence the reception of his empirical astronomical work. Legacy Biographies The first biography of Tycho, which was also the first full-length biography of any scientist, was written by Gassendi in 1654. In 1779, Tycho de Hoffmann wrote of Tycho's life in his history of the Brahe family. In 1913, Dreyer published Tycho's collected works, facilitating further research. Early modern scholarship on Tycho tended to see the shortcomings of his astronomical model, painting him