Such are the most remarkable chemical facts which I have observed in the works of Geber. They are so numerous and important, as to entitle him with some justice to the appellation of the father and founder of chemistry. Besides the metals, sulphur and salt, with which the Greeks and Romans were acquainted, he knew the method of preparing sulphuric acid, nitric acid, and aqua regia. He knew the method of dissolving the metals by means of these acids, and actually prepared nitrate of silver and corrosive sublimate. He was acquainted with potash and soda, both in the state of carbonates and caustic. He was aware that these alkalies dissolve sulphur, and he employed the process to obtain sulphur in a state of purity.
But notwithstanding the experimental merit of Geber, his spirit of philosophy did not much exceed that of his countrymen. He satisfied himself with accounting for phenomena by occult causes, as was the universal custom of the Arabians; a practice quite inconsistent with real scientific progress. That this was the case will appear from the following passage, in which Geber attempts to give an explanation of the properties of the great elixir or philosopher’s stone: “Therefore, let him attend to the properties and ways of action of the composition of the greater elixir. For we endeavour to make one substance, yet compounded and composed of many, so permanently fixed, that being put upon the fire, the fire cannot injure; and that it may be mixed with metals in flux and flow with them, and enter with that which in them is of an ingressible substance, and be fermented with that which in them is of a permixable substance; and be consolidated with that which in them is of a consolidable substance; and be fixed with that which in them is of a fixable substance; and not be burnt by those things which burn not gold and silver; and take away consolidation and weights with due ignition.”142
The next Arabian whose name I shall introduce into this history, is Al-Hassain-Abou-Ali-Ben-Abdallah-Ebn-Sina, surnamed Scheik Reyes, or prince of physicians, vulgarly known by the name of Avicenna. Next to Aristotle and Galen, his reputation was the highest, and his authority the greatest of all medical practitioners; and he reigned paramount, or at least shared the medical sceptre till he was hurled from his throne by the rude hands of Paracelsus.
Avicenna was born in the year 978, at Bokhara, to which place his father had retired during the emirate of the calif Nuhh, one of the sons of the celebrated Almansor. Ali, his father, had dwelt in Balkh, in the Chorazan. After the birth of Avicenna he went to Asschena in Bucharia, where he continued to live till his son had reached his fifteenth year. No labour nor expense was spared on the education of Avicenna, whose abilities were so extraordinary that he is said to have been able to repeat the whole Koran by heart at the age of ten years. Ali gave him for a master Abou-Abdallah-Annatholi, who taught him grammar, dialectics, the geometry of Euclid, and the astronomy of Ptolemy. But Avicenna quitted his tuition because he could not give him the solution of a problem in logic. He attached himself to a merchant, who taught him arithmetic, and made him acquainted with the Indian numerals from which our own are derived. He then undertook a journey to Bagdad, where he studied philosophy under the great Peripatician, Abou-Nasr-Alfarabi, a disciple of Mesue the elder. At the same time he applied himself to medicine, under the tuition of the Nestorian, Abou-Sahel-Masichi. He informs us himself that he applied with an extraordinary ardour to the study of the sciences. He was in the habit of drinking great quantities of liquids during the night, to prevent him from sleeping; and he often obtained in a dream a solution of those problems at which he had laboured in vain while he was awake. When the difficulties to be surmounted appeared to him too great, he prayed to God to communicate to him a share of his wisdom; and these prayers, he assures us, were never offered in vain. The metaphysics of Aristotle was the only book which he could not comprehend, and after reading them over forty times, he threw them aside with great anger at himself.
Already, at the age of sixteen, he was a physician of eminence; and at eighteen he performed a brilliant cure on the calif Nuhh, which gave him such celebrity that Mohammed, Calif of Chorazan, invited him to his palace; but Avicenna rather chose to reside at Dschordschan, where he cured the nephew of the calif Kabus of a grievous distemper.
Afterwards he went to Ray, where he was appointed physician to Prince Magd-Oddaula. Here he composed a dictionary of the sciences. Sometime after this he was raised to the dignity of vizier at Hamdan; but he was speedily deprived of his office and thrown into prison for having favoured a sedition. While incarcerated he wrote many works on medicine and philosophy. By-and-by he was set at liberty, and restored to his dignity; but after the death of his protector, Schems-Oddaula, being afraid of a new attempt to deprive him of his liberty, he took refuge in the house of an apothecary, where he remained long concealed and completely occupied with his literary labours. Being at last discovered he was thrown into the castle of Berdawa, where he was confined for four months. At the end of that time a fortunate accident enabled him to make his escape, in the disguise of a monk. He repaired to Ispahan, where he lived much respected at the court of the calif Ola-Oddaula. He did not live to a great age, because he had worn out his constitution by too free an indulgence of women and wine. Having been attacked by a violent colic, he caused eight injections, prepared from long pepper, to be thrown up in one day. This excessive use of so irritating a remedy, occasioned an excoriation of the intestines, which was followed by an attack of epilepsy. A journey to Hamdan, in company with the calif, and the use of mithridate, into which his servant by mistake had put too much opium, contributed still further to put an end to his life. He had scarcely arrived at the town when he died in the fifty-eighth year of his age, in the year 1036.
Avicenna was the author of the immense work entitled “Canon,” which was translated into Latin, and for five centuries constituted the great standard, the infallible guide, the confession of faith of the medical world. All medical knowledge was contained in it; and nothing except what was contained in it was considered by medical men as of any importance. When we take a view of the Canon, and compare it with the writings of the Greeks, and even of the Arabians, that preceded it, we shall find some difficulty in accounting for the unbounded authority which he acquired over the medical world, and for the length of time during which that authority continued.
But it must be remembered, that Avicenna’s reign occupies the darkest and most dreary period of the history of the human mind. The human race seems to have been asleep, and the mental faculties in a state of complete torpor. Mankind, accustomed in their religious opinions to obey blindly the infallible decisions of the church, and to think precisely as the church enjoined them to think, would naturally look for some means to save them the trouble of thinking on medical subjects; and this means they found fortunately in the canons of Avicenna. These canons, in their opinion, were equally infallible with the decisions of the holy father, and required to be as implicitly obeyed. The whole science of medicine was reduced to a simple perusal of Avicenna’s Canon, and an implicit adherence to his rules and directions.
When we compare this celebrated work with the medical writings of the Greeks, and even of the Arabians, the predecessors of Avicenna, we shall be surprised that it contains little or nothing which can be considered as original; the whole is borrowed from the writings of Galen, or Ætius, or Rhazes: scarcely ever does he venture to trust his own wings, but rests entirely on the sagacity of his Greek and Arabian predecessors. Galen is his great guide; or, if he ever forsake him, it is to place himself under the direction of Aristotle.
The Canon contains a collection of most of the valuable information contained in the writings of the ancient Greek physicians, arranged, it must be allowed, with great clearness. The Hhawi of Razes is almost as complete; but it wants the lucidus ordo which distinguishes the Canon of Avicenna. I conceive that the high reputation which Avicenna acquired, was owing to the care which he bestowed upon his arrangement. He was undoubtedly a man of abilities, but not of inventive genius. There is little original matter in the Canon. But the physicians in the west, while Avicenna occupied the medical sceptre, had no opportunity of judging of the originality of their oracle, because they were unacquainted with the Greek language, and could not therefore consult the writings of Galen or Ætius, except through the corrupt medium of an Arabian version.
But it is not the medical reputation of Avicenna that induced me to mention his name here. Like all the Arabian physicians, he was also a chemist; and his chemical tracts having been translated into Latin, and published in Western Europe, we are enabled to judge of their merit, and to estimate the effect which they may have had upon the progress of chemistry. The first Latin translation of the chemical writings of Avicenna was published at Basil in 1572; they consist of two separate books; the first, under the name of “Porta Elementorum,” consists of a dialogue between a master and his pupil, respecting the mysteries of Alchymy. He gives an account of the four elements, fire, air, water, earth, and gives them their usual qualities of dry, moist, hot, and cold. He then treats of air, which, he says, is the food of fire, of water, of honey, of the mutual conversion of the elements into each other; of milk and cheese, of the mixture of fire and water, and that all things are composed of the four elements. There is nothing in this tract which has any pretension to novelty; he merely retails the opinions of the Greek philosophers.
The other treatise is much larger, and professes to teach the whole art of alchymy; it is divided into ten parts, entitled “Dictiones.” The first diction treats of the philosopher’s stone in general; the second diction treats of the method of converting light things into heavy, hard things into soft; of the mutation of the elements; and of some other particulars of a nature not very intelligible. The third diction treats of the formation of the elixir; and the same subject is continued in the fourth.
The fifth diction is one of the most important in the whole treatise; it is in general intelligible, which is more than can be said of those that precede it. This diction is divided into twenty-eight chapters: the first chapter treats of copper, which, he says, is of three kinds; permenian copper, natural copper, and Navarre copper. But of these three varieties he gives no account whatever; though he enlarges a good deal on the qualities of copper—not its properties, but its supposed medicinal action. It is hot and dry, he says, but in the calx of it there is humidity. His account of the composition of copper is the same with that of Geber.
The second chapter treats of lead, the third of tin, and in the remaining chapters he treats successively of brass, iron, gold, silver, marcasite, sulphuret of antimony, which is distinguished by the name of alcohol; of soda, which he says is the juice of a plant called sosa. And he gives an unintelligible process by which it is extracted from that plant, without mentioning a syllable about the combustion to which it is obvious that it must have been subjected.
In the twelfth chapter he treats of saltpetre, which, he says, is brought from Sicily, from India, from Egypt, and from Herminia. He describes several varieties of it, but mentions nothing about its characteristic property of deflagrating upon burning coals. He then treats successively of common salt, of sal-gem, of vitriol, of sulphur, of orpiment, and of sal ammoniac, which, he says, comes from Egypt, from India, and from Forperia. In the nineteenth and subsequent chapters he treats of aurum vivum, of hair, of urine, of eggs, of blood, of glass, of white linen, of horse-dung, and of vinegar.
The sixth diction, in thirty-three chapters, treats of the calcination of the metals, of sublimation, and of some other processes. I think it unnecessary to be more particular, because I cannot perceive any thing in it that had not been previously treated of by Geber.
The seventh diction treats of the preparation of blood and eggs, and the method of dividing them into their four elements. It treats also of the elixir of silver, and the elixir of gold; but it contains no chemical fact of any importance.
The eighth diction treats of the preparation of the ferment of silver, and of gold. The ninth diction treats of the whole magistery, and of the nuptials of the sun and moon; that is, of gold and silver. The tenth diction treats of weights.
The chemical writings of Avicenna are of little value, and apply chemistry rather to the supposed medical qualities of the different substances treated of, than to the advancement of the science. All the chemical knowledge which he possesses is obviously drawn from Geber. Geber, then, may be looked upon as the only chemist among the Arabians to whom we are indebted for any real improvements and new facts. It is true that the Arabian physicians improved considerably the materia medica of the Greeks, and introduced many valuable medicines into common use which were unknown before their time. It is enough to mention corrosive sublimate, manna, opium, asafœtida. It would be difficult to make out many of the vegetable substances used by the Arabian chemists; because the plants which they designated by particular names, can very seldom be identified. Botany at that time had made so little progress, that no method was known of describing plants so as to enable other persons to determine what they were.
Hitherto we have witnessed only the first rude beginnings, or, as it were, the early dawn of the chemical day. It is from the time of Paracelsus that the true commencement of chemical investigations is to be dated. Not that Paracelsus or his followers understood the nature of the science, or undertook any regular or successful investigation. But Paracelsus shook the medical throne of Galen and Avicenna to its very foundation; he roused the latent energies of the human mind, which had for so long a period lain torpid; he freed medical men from those trammels, and put an end to that despotism which had existed for five centuries. He pointed out the importance of chemical medicines, and of chemical investigations, to the physician. This led many laborious men to turn their attention to the subject. Those metals which were considered as likely to afford useful medicines, mercury for example, and antimony, were exposed to the action of an infinite number of reagents, and a prodigious collection of new products obtained and introduced into medicine. Some of these were better, and some worse, than the preparations formerly employed; but all of them led to an increase of the stock of chemical knowledge, which now began to accumulate with considerable rapidity. It will be proper, therefore, to give a somewhat particular account of the life and opinions of Paracelsus, so far as they can be made out from his writings, because, though he was not himself a scientific chemist, he may be truly considered as the man through whose means the stock of chemical knowledge was accumulated, which was afterwards, by the ingenuity of Beccher, and Stahl, moulded into a scientific form.
Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast ab Hohenheim (as he denominates himself) was born at Einsideln, two German miles from Zurich. His father was called William Bombast von Hohenheim. He was a very near relation of George Bombast von Hohenheim, who became afterwards grand master of the order of Johannites. William Bombast von Hohenheim practised medicine at Einsideln.143 After receiving the first rudiments of his education in his native city, he became a wandering scholastic, as was then the custom with poor scholars. He wandered from province to province, predicting the future by the position of the stars, and the lines on the hand, and exhibiting all the chemical processes which he had learned from founders and alchymists. For his initiation in alchymy, astrology, and medicine, he was indebted to his father, who was much devoted to these three sciences. Paracelsus mentions also the names of several ecclesiastics from whom he received chemical information; among others, Tritheimius, abbot of Spanheim; Bishop Scheit, of Stettbach; Bishop Erhart, of Laventall; Bishop Nicolas, of Hippon; and Bishop Matthew Schacht. He seems also to have served some years as an army surgeon, for he mentions many cures which he performed in the Low Countries, in the States of the Church, in the kingdom of Naples, and during the wars against the Venetians, the Danes, and the Dutch.
There is some uncertainty whether he received a regular college education, as was then the practice with all medical men. He acknowledges himself that his medical antagonists reproached him with never having frequented their schools; and he is perpetually affirming, that a physician should receive all his knowledge from God, and not from man. But if we can trust his own assertions, there can be no doubt that he took a regular medical degree, which implies a regular college education. He tells us, in his preface to his Chirurgia Magna, that he visited the universities of Germany, France, and Italy. He assures his readers, that he was the ornament of the schools where he studied. He even speaks of the oath which he was obliged to take when he received his medical degree; but where he studied, or where and when he received his medical degree, are questions which neither Paracelsus nor his disciples, nor his biographers, have enabled us to solve. If he ever attended a university, he must have neglected his studies, otherwise he could not have been ignorant, as he confessedly was, of the very first elements of the most common kinds of knowledge. But if he neglected the universities, he laboured long and assiduously with the rich Sigismond Fuggerus, of Schwartz, in order to learn the true secret of forming the philosopher’s stone.
He gives us some details of the numerous journeys that he made, as was customary with the alchymists of the time, into the mountains of Bohemia, the East, and Sweden, to inspect the mines, to get himself initiated into the mysteries of the eastern adepts, to inspect the wonders of nature, and to view the celebrated diamond mountain, the position of which, however, he unfortunately forgets to specify.
In the preface to his Chirurgia Magna, he informs us that he traversed Spain, Portugal, England, Prussia, Poland, and Transylvania; where he not only profited by the information of the medical men with whom he became acquainted, but that he drew much precious information from old women, gipsies, conjurors, and chemists.144 He spent several years in Hungary; and informs us that at Weissenburg, in Croatia, and in Stockholm, he was taught by several old women to prepare drinks capable of curing ulcers. He is said also to have made a voyage into Egypt, and even into Tartary; and he accompanied the son of the Kan of the Tartars to Constantinople, in order to learn the secret of the philosopher’s stone from Trismogin, who inhabited that capital. This prodigious activity, this constant motion from place to place, left him but little leisure for reading: accordingly he informs us himself, that during the space of ten years he never opened a book, and that his whole library consisted only of six sheets. The inventory of his books, drawn up after his death, confirms this recital; for they consisted only of the Bible, the Concordance to the Bible, the New Testament, and the Commentaries of St. Jerome on the Evangelists.
We know not at what period he returned back to Germany; but at the age of thirty-three the great number of fortunate cures which he had performed rendered him an object of admiration to the people, and of jealousy to the rival physicians of the time. He assures us that he cured eighteen princes whose diseases had been aggravated by the practitioners devoted to the system of Galen. Among others he cured Philip, Margrave of Baden, of a dysentery, who promised him a great reward, but did not keep his promise, and even treated him in a way unworthy of that prince. This cure, however, and others of a similar nature, added greatly to his celebrity; and in order to raise his reputation to the highest possible pitch, he announced publicly that he was able to cure all the diseases hitherto reckoned incurable; and that he had discovered an elixir, by means of which the life of man might be prolonged at pleasure to any extent whatever. He began the practice, which has since been so successfully followed in this country, of dispensing medicines gratuitously to the poor, in order to induce the rich to apply to him for assistance when they were overtaken with diseases.
In the year 1526 Paracelsus was appointed professor of physic and surgery in the University of Basil. This appointment was given him, it is said, by the recommendation of Œcolampadius. He introduced the custom of lecturing in the common language of the country, as is at present the universal practice: but during the time of Paracelsus, and long after indeed, all lectures were delivered in Latin. The new method which he followed in explaining the theory and practice of the art; the numerous fortunate cures which he stated in confirmation of his method of treatment; the emphasis with which he spoke of his secrets for prolonging life, and for curing every kind of disease without distinction, but still more his lecturing in a language which was understood by the whole population, drew to Bâle an immense crowd of idle, enthusiastic, and credulous hearers.
The lectures which he delivered on Practical Medicine still remain, written in a confused mixture of German and barbarous Latin, and containing little or nothing except a farrago of empirical remedies, advanced with the greatest confidence. They have a much greater resemblance to a collection of quack advertisements than to the sober lectures of a professor in a university. In the month of November, 1526, he wrote to Christopher Clauser, a physician in Zurich, that as Hippocrates was the first physician among the Greeks, Avicenna among the Arabians, Galen among the Pergamenians, and Marsilius among the Italians, so he was beyond dispute the greatest physician among the Germans. Every country produces an illustrious physician, whose medicines are adapted to the climate in which he lived, but not suited to other countries. The remedies of Hippocrates were good to the Greeks, but not suitable to the Germans; thus it was necessary that an inspired physician should spring up in every country, and that he was the person destined to teach the Germans the art of curing all diseases.145
Paracelsus began his professorial career by burning publicly, in his class-room, and in the presence of his pupils, the works of Galen and Avicenna, assuring his hearers that the strings of his shoes possessed more knowledge than those two celebrated physicians. All the universities united had not, he assured them, as much knowledge as was contained in his own beard, and the hairs upon his neck were better informed than all the writers that ever existed put together. To give the reader an idea of the arrogant absurdity of his pretensions, I shall translate a few sentences of the preface to his tract, entitled “Paragranum,” where he indulges in his usual strain of rodomontade: “Me, me you shall follow, you Avicenna, you Galen, you Rhazes, you Montagnana, you Mesue. I shall not follow you, but you shall follow me. You, I say, you inhabitants of Paris, you inhabitants of Montpelier, you Suevi, you Misnians, you inhabitants of Cologne, you inhabitants of Vienna; all you whom the Rhine and the Danube nourish, you who inhabit the islands of the sea; you also Italy, you Dalmatia, you Athens, you Greek, you Arabian, you Israelite—I shall not follow you, but you shall follow me. Nor shall any one lurk in the darkest and most remote corner whom the dogs shall not piss upon. I shall be the monarch, the monarchy shall be mine. If I administer, and I bind up your loins, is he with whom you are at present delighted a Cacophrastus? This ordure must be eaten by you.”
“What will your opinion be when you see your Cacophrastus constituted the chief of the monarchy? What will you think when you see the sect of Theophrastus leading on a solemn triumph, if I make you pass under the yoke of my philosophy? your Pliny will you call Cacopliny, and your Aristotle, Cacoaristotle? If I plunge them together with your Porphyry, Albertus, &c., and the whole of their compatriots into my necessary.” But the terms become now so coarse and indelicate, that I cannot bring myself to proceed further with the translation. Enough has been given to show the extreme arrogance and folly of Paracelsus.
So far, however, was this impudence and grossness from injuring the interest of Paracelsus, that we are assured by Ramus and Urstisius that it contributed still further to increase it. The coarseness of his language was well suited to the vulgarity of the age; and his arrogance and boasting were considered, as usual, as a proof of superior merit. The cure which he performed on Frobenius, drew the attention of Erasmus himself, who consulted him about the diseases with which he was afflicted; and the letters that passed between them are still preserved. The epistle of Paracelsus is short, enigmatical, and unintelligible; that of Erasmus is distinguished by that clearness and elegance which characterize his writings.146 But Frobenius died in the month of October, 1527, and the antagonists of Paracelsus attributed his death (and probably with justice) to the violent remedies which had been administered to a man whose constitution had been destroyed by the gout.
His death contributed not a little to tarnish the glory of Paracelsus: but he suffered the greatest injury from the habits of intoxication in which he indulged, and from the vulgarity of the way in which he spent his time. He hardly ever went into his class-room to deliver a lecture till he was half intoxicated, and scarcely ever dictated to his secretaries till he had lost the use of his reason by a too liberal indulgence in wine. If he was summoned to visit a patient, he scarcely ever went but in a state of intoxication. Not unfrequently he passed the whole night in the alehouse, in the company of peasants, and when morning came, was quite incapable of performing the duties of his station. On one occasion, after a debauch, which lasted the whole night, he was called next morning to visit a patient; on entering the room, he inquired if the sick person had taken any thing: “Nothing,” was the answer, “except the body of our Lord.” “Since you have already,” says he, “provided yourself with another physician, my presence here is unnecessary,” and he left the apartment instantly. When Albertus Basa, physician to the king of Poland, visited Paracelsus in the city of Basel, he carried him to see a patient whose strength was completely exhausted, and which, in his opinion, it was impossible to restore; but Paracelsus, wishing to make a parade of his skill, administered to him three drops of his laudanum, and invited him to dine with him next day.147 The invitation was accepted, and the sick man dined next day with his physician.
Towards the end of the year 1527 a disgraceful dispute into which he entered brought his career, as a professor, to a sudden termination. The canon Cornelius, of Lichtenfels, who had been long a martyr to the gout, employed him as his physician, and promised him one hundred florins if he could cure him. Paracelsus made him take three pills of laudanum, and having thus freed him from pain, demanded the sum agreed upon; but Lichtenfels refused to pay him the whole of it. Paracelsus summoned him before the court, and the magistrate of Basle decided that the canon was bound to pay only the regular price of the medicine administered. Irritated at this decision, our intoxicated professor uttered a most violent invective against the magistrate, who threatened to punish him for his outrageous conduct. His friends advised him to save himself by flight. He took their advice, and thus abdicated his professorship. But, by this time, his celebrity as a teacher had been so completely destroyed by his foolish and immoral conduct, that he had lost all his hearers. In consequence of this state of things, his flight from Basle produced no sensation whatever in that university.
Paracelsus betook himself, in the first place, to Alsace, and sent for his faithful follower, the bookseller, Operinus, together with the whole of his chemical apparatus. In 1528 we find him at Colmar, where he recommenced his ambulating life of a theosophist, which he had led during his youth. His book upon syphilis, known at that time by the name of Morbus Gallicus, was dedicated at Colmar, to the chief magistrate of Colmar, Hieronymus Bonerus.148 In 1531 he was at Saint-Gallen; in 1535, at Pfeffersbade, and in 1536, at Augsburg, where he dedicated his Chirurgia Magna to Malhausen. At the request of John de Leippa, Marshal of Bohemia, he undertook a journey into Moravia; as that nobleman, having been informed that Paracelsus understood the method of curing the gout radically, was anxious to put himself under his care. Paracelsus lived for a long time at Kroman, and its environs. John de Leippa, instead of receiving any benefit from the medicines administered to him, became daily worse, and at last died. This was the fate also of the lady of Zerotin, in whom the remedies of Paracelsus produced no fewer than twenty-four epileptic fits in one day. Paracelsus, instead of waiting the disgrace with which the death of this lady would have overwhelmed him, announced his intention of going to Vienna, that he might see how they would treat him in that capital.
It is said, that from Vienna he went into Hungary; but in 1538, we find him in Villach, where he dedicated his Chronica et Origo Carinthiæ to the states of Carinthia.149 His book, De Natura Rerum, had been dedicated to Winkelstein, and the dedication is dated also at Villach, in the year 1537.150 In 1540 he was at Mindelheim, and in 1541, at Strasburg, where he died, in St. Stephen’s hospital, in the forty-eighth year of his age.
To form an accurate idea of this most extraordinary man, we must attend to his habits, and to the situation in which he was placed. He had acquired such a habit of moving about, that he assures us himself he found it impossible for him to continue for any length of time in one place. He was always surrounded by a number of followers, whom neither his habits of intoxication, nor the foolish and immoral conduct in which he was accustomed to indulge, could induce to forsake him. The most celebrated of these was Operinus, a printer at Basle, on whom Paracelsus lavishes the most excessive praises, in his book De Morbo Gallico. But Operinus loaded his master with obloquy, being provoked at him because he had not made him acquainted with the secret of the philosopher’s stone, as he had promised to do. We must therefore be cautious in believing the stories that he relates to the discredit of his master. We know the names of two others of his followers; Francis, who assures us that Paracelsus was devoted to the transmutation of metals; and George Vetter, who considered him as a magician; as was the opinion also of Operinus. Paracelsus himself, speaks of Dr. Cornelius, whom he calls his secretary, and in honour of whom he wrote several of his libels. Other libels are dedicated to Doctors Peter, Andrew, and Ursinus, to the licentiate Pancrace, and to Mr. Raphael. On this occasion he complains bitterly of the infidelity of his servants, who, he says, had succeeded in stealing from him several of his secrets; and had by this means been enabled to establish their reputation. He accuses equally the barbers and bathers that followed him, and is no less severe upon the physicians of every country through which he travelled.
When we attempt to form an accurate conception of the medical and philosophical opinions of this singular man, we find ourselves beset with almost insurmountable difficulties. His statements are so much at variance with each other, in his different pieces, and so much confusion reigns with respect to the order of publication, that we know not what to fix on as his last and maturest opinions. His style is execrable; filled with new words of his own coining, and of mysticisms either introduced to excite the admiration of the ignorant, or from the fanaticism and credulity of the writer, who was undoubtedly, to a considerable extent, the dupe of his own impostures. That he was in possession of the philosopher’s stone, or of a medicine capable of prolonging life to an indefinite length, as he all along asserted, he could not himself believe; but he had boasted so long and so loudly of his wonderful cures, and of the efficacy of his medicines, that there can be no doubt that he ultimately placed implicit faith in them. The blunders of the transcribers whom he employed to copy his works, may perhaps account for some of the contradictions which they contain. But how can we look for a regular system of opinions from a man who generally dictated his works when in a state of intoxication, and thus laboured under an almost constant deprivation of reason.
His obscurity was partly the effect of design, and no doubt was intended to exalt the notions entertained of his profundity. He uses common words in new significations, without giving any indication of the change which he introduced. Thus anatomy, in the writings of Paracelsus, signifies not the dissection of dead animals to determine their structure, but it means the nature, force, and magical designation of a thing. And as, according to the Platonic and Cabalistic theory, every earthly body is formed after the model of a heavenly body, Paracelsus calls anatomy the knowledge of that model, of that ideal, or of that paradigm after which all things are created. He terms the fundamental force of a thing a star, and defines alchymy the art of drawing out the stars of metals. The star is the source of all knowledge. When we eat, we introduce into our bodies the star, which is then modified, and favours nutrition.
It is probable that many of his obscure and unintelligible
expressions are the fruit of ignorance. Thus
he uses the term pagoyus, instead of paganus. He
gives the name of pagoyæ to the four entities, or causes
of diseases, founded on the influence of the stars, to
the elementary qualities; to the occult qualities, and
to the influence of spirits; because these had been
already admitted by the Pagans. But the fifth entity,
or cause of disease, which has God immediately for
its author, is non pagoya. The undimia of Paracelsus
is our œdema; only he applies the name to every kind
of dropsy. The Latin word tonitru, we find is declined
by Paracelsus. Thus he says, lapis tonitrui. The
well-known line of Ovid,
Tollere nodosam nescit medicina podagram,
He travestied into
Nescit tartaream Roades curare podagram.151
Roades, he says, means medicines for horses; and
if any person wishes a more elegant verse, he may
make it for himself.152 He employs, also, a great number
of words to which no meaning whatever can be
attached; and to which, in all probability, he himself
had affixed none.
As is the case with all fanatics, he treated with contempt every kind of knowledge acquired by labour and application; and boasted that his wisdom was communicated to him directly by God Almighty. The theosophist who is worthy of partaking of the divine light, has no occasion for adopting a positive religion, nor of subjecting himself to any kind of religious ceremony. The divine light within, which assimilates him to the Deity, more than compensates for all these vulgar usages, and raises the illuminated votary far above the beggarly elements of external worship. Accordingly, Paracelsus has been accused of treating the public worship of the Deity with contempt. Not satisfied with the plain sense of the book, he attempted to explain in a mystical manner the words and syllables of the Bible. He accused Luther of not going far enough. “Luther,” says he, “is not worthy of untying the strings of my shoes: should I undertake a reformation, I would begin by sending the pope and the reformers themselves to school.” God, says Paracelsus, is the first and most excellent of writers. The Holy Scripture conducts us to all truth, and teaches us all things. But medicine, philosophy, and astronomy, are among the number of things. Therefore, when we want to know what magical medicine is, we must consult the Apocalypse. The Bible, with its paraphrases, is the key to the theory of diseases. It puts it in our power to understand St. John, who, like Daniel, Ezekiel, Moses, &c., was a magician, a cabalist, a diviner. The first duty of a physician is to study the Cabala, without which he must every moment commit a thousand blunders. “Learn,” says he, “the cabalistic art, which includes under it all the others.” “Man invents nothing, the devil invents nothing; it is God alone who unveils to us the light of nature.” “God honoured at first with his illumination the blind pagans, Apollo, Æsculapius, Machaon, Podalirius, and Hippocrates, and imparted to them the genius of medicine; their successors were the sophists.” One would suppose, from this passage, that Paracelsus had read and studied Hippocrates, and that he held him in high estimation. But the commentaries which he has left on some of the aphorisms, show evidently that he did not even understand the Greek physician. “The compassion of God,” says he, “is the only foundation of medical science, and not a knowledge of the great masters, or of the writings which they have left in Greek and Latin.” “God often acts in dreams by the light of nature, and points out to man the manner of curing diseases.” “This knowledge renders all those objects visible which would otherwise escape the sight; and when faith is joined with it, nothing is then impossible to the theosophist, who may transport the ocean to the top of Mount Ætna, and Olympus into the Red Sea.” Paracelsus predicts that by the year 1590 Christian theosophy would be generally spread over the world, and that the Galenical schools would be almost or entirely overthrown.
We find in Paracelsus some traces of the opinions of the Gnostics and Arians, who considered Christ as the first emanation of the Deity. He calls the first man parens hominis; and makes all spirits emanate from him. He is the limbus minor, or the last creature, into whom enters the great limbus, or the seed of all the creatures, the infinite being. All the sciences, and all the arts of man, are derived from this great limbus; and he who can sink himself in the little limbus, that is to say, in Adam, and who can communicate by faith with Jesus Christ, may invoke all spirits. Those who owe their science to this limbus, are the best informed; those who derive it from the stars, occupy the last rank; and those who owe it to the light of nature, are intermediate between the preceding. Jesus Christ, in his capacity of limbus minor and first man, being always an emanation of the Divinity; and, consequently, a subordinate personage. These ideas explain to us why Paracelsus passed for an Arian, and was supposed not to believe in the Divinity of Jesus Christ. He was of opinion that the faithful performed miracles, and operated magical cures by their simple confidence in God the Father, and not by their faith in Christ; but he adds, however, that we ought to pray to Jesus, in order to obtain his intercession.
From the preceding attempt to explain the opinions of Paracelsus, it will be evident to the reader that he was both a fanatic and impostor, and that his theory (if such a name can be given to the reveries of a drunkard), consisted in uniting medicine with the doctrines of the Cabala. A few more observations will be necessary to develop his dogmas still further.
Every body, in his opinion, and man in particular, is double, consisting of a material and spiritual substance.153 The spiritual, which may be called the sideric, results from the celestial influences; and we may trace after it a figure capable of producing all kinds of magical effects. When we can act upon the body itself, we act at the same time upon the spiritual form by characters and conjurations.154 Yet, in another passage, he blames all magical ceremonies, and ascribes them to want of faith. The celestial intelligences impress upon material bodies certain signs, which manifest their influence. The perfection of art consists in understanding the meaning of these signs, and in determining from them the nature, qualities, and essence of a body. Adam, the first man, had a perfect knowledge of the Cabala; he could interpret the signatures of all things. It was this which enabled him to assign to the animals names which suited them best. A man who renounces all sensuality, and is blindly obedient to the will of God, is capable of taking a share in the actions which celestial intelligences perform; and consequently is possessed of the philosopher’s stone. Never does he want any thing; all creatures in earth and in heaven are obedient to him; he can cure all diseases, and prolong his life as long as he pleases; because he possesses the tincture which Adam and the patriarch’s before the flood employed to prolong the term of their existence.155 Beelzebub, the chief of the demons, is also subject to the power of magic: and who can blame the theosophist for believing in the devil? He ought, however, to take care to prevent this malignant spirit from commanding him. Paracelsus was often wont to say, “If God does not aid me, the devil will help me.”
Pantheism was one of the principal dogmas of the Cabala; and Paracelsus adopts it in all its grossness. He affirms perpetually that every thing is animated in the universe; that every thing which exists, eats, drinks, and voids excrements: even minerals and liquids take food and void the digested remains of their nourishment.156 This opinion leads necessarily to the admission of a great number of spiritual substances, intermediate between material and immaterial in every part of the sublunary world, in water, air, earth, and fire; who, as well as man, eat, drink, converse, beget children; but which approach pure spirits in this, that they are more transparent, and infinitely more agile than all other animal bodies. Man possesses a soul, of which these pure spirits are destitute. Hence it happens that these spiritual substances are at once body and spirit without a soul. When they die (for like the human race they are subject to death), no soul remains. Like us they are exposed to diseases. Their names vary according to the places that they occupy. When they inhabit the air, they are called sylphs; when the water, nymphs; when the earth, pigmies; when the fire, salamanders.157 The inhabitants of the waters are also called undinæ, and those of the fire vulcani. The sylphs approach nearest to our nature, as they live in the air like us. The sylphs, nymphs, and pigmies, sometimes obtain permission from God to make themselves visible, to converse with men, to indulge in carnal pleasures, and to produce children. But the salamanders have no relation to man. These spiritual beings are acquainted with the future, and capable of revealing it to man. They appear under the form of ignes fatui. We have also the history of the fairies and the giants; and are told how these spiritual beings are the guardians of concealed treasures; and how these sylphs, nymphs, pigmies, and salamanders, may be charmed, and their treasures taken from them.
This division of man into body and spirit, and of the things of nature into visible and invisible, has in all ages of the world, been adopted by fanatics, because it enabled them to explain the history of ghosts, and a thousand similar prejudices. Hence the distinction between soul and spirit, which is so very ancient; and hence the three following harmonies to which the successors of Paracelsus paid a particular attention: Soul, Spirit, Body, Mercury, Sulphur, Salt, Water, Air, Earth. The will and the imagination of man acts principally by means of the spirit. Hence the reason of the efficacy of sorcery and magic. The nævi materni are the impressions of these vice-men, and Paracelsus calls them cocomica signa. The sideric body of man draws to him, by imagination, all that surrounds him, and particularly the stars, on which it acts like a magnet. In this manner, women with child, and during the regular period of monthly evacuation, having a diseased imagination, are not only capable of poisoning a mirror by their breath, but of injuring the infants in their wombs, and even also of poisoning the moon. But it seems needless to continue this disagreeable detail of the absurd and ridiculous opinions which Paracelsus has consigned to us in his different tracts.
The Physiology of Paracelsus (if such a name can be applied to his reveries) is nothing else than an application of the laws of the Cabala to the explanation of the functions of the body. There exists, he assures us, an intimate connexion between the sun and the heart, the moon and the brain, Jupiter and the liver, Saturn and the spleen, Mercury and the lungs, Mars and the bile, Venus and the kidneys. In another part of his works, he informs us that the sun acts on the umbilicus and the middle parts of the abdomen, the moon on the spine, Mercury on the bowels, Venus on the organs of generation, Mars on the face, Jupiter on the head, and Saturn on the extremities. The pulse is nothing else than the measure of the temperature of the body, according to the space of the six places which are in relation to the planets. Two pulses under the sole of the feet belong to Saturn and Jupiter, two at the elbow to Mars and Venus, two in the temples to the moon and mercury. The pulse of the sun is found under the heart. The macrocosm has also seven pulses, which are the revolutions of the seven planets, and the irregularity or intermittence of these pulses, is represented by the eclipses. The moon and Saturn are charged in the macrocosm with thickening the water, which causes it to congeal. In like manner the moon of the microcosm, that is to say the brain, coagulates the blood. Hence melancholy persons, whom Paracelsus calls lunatics, have a thick blood. We ought not to say of a man that he has such and such a complexion; but that it is Mars, Venus, &c., so that a physician ought to know the planets of the microcosm, the arctic and antarctic pole, the meridian, the zodiac, the east and the west, before trying to explain the functions or cure the diseases.158 This knowledge is acquired by a continual comparison of the macrocosm with the microcosm. What must have been the state of medicine at the time when Paracelsus wrote, when the propagator of such opinions could be reckoned one of the greatest of its reformers?
The system of Galen had for its principal basis the doctrine of the four elements, fire, air, water, and earth. Paracelsus neglected these elements, and multiplied the substances of the disease itself. He admits, strictly speaking, three or four elements; namely, the star, the root, the element, the sperm, which he distinguishes by the name of the true seed. All these elements were originally confounded together in the chaos or yliados. The star is the active force which gives form to matter. The stars are reasonable beings addicted to sodomy and adultery, like other creatures. Each of them draws at pleasure out of the chaos, the plant and the metal to which it has an affinity, and gives a sideric form to their root. There are two kinds of seed; the sperm is the vehicle of the true seed. It is engendered by speculation, by imagination, by the power of the star. The occult, invisible, sideric body produces the true seed, and the Adamic man secretes only the visible envelope of it. Putrefaction cannot give birth to a new body: the seed must pre-exist, and it is developed during putrefaction by the power of the stars. The generation of animals is produced by the concourse of the infinite number of seeds which detach themselves from all parts of the body. Thus the seed of the nose reproduces a nose, that of the eye the eye, and so on.
With respect to the elements themselves, Paracelsus admits occasionally their influence on the functions of the body, and the theory of diseases; but he deduces the faculties which they possess from the stars. It was he that first shook the doctrine of the four elements, originally contrived by Empedocles. Alchymy had introduced another set of elements, and the alchymists maintained that salt, sulphur, and mercury, were the true elements of things. Paracelsus endeavoured to reconcile these chemical elements with his cabalistic ideas, and to show more clearly their utility in the theory of medicine. He invented a sideric salt, which can only be perceived by the exquisite senses of a theosophist, elevated by the abnegation of all gross sensuality to a level with pure and spiritual demons. This salt is the cause of the consistence of bodies, and it is it which gives them the faculty of being reproduced from their ashes.
Paracelsus imagined also a sideric sulphur, which being vivified by the influence of the stars, gives bodies the property of growing, and of being combustible. He admits also a sideric mercury, the foundation of fluidity and volatilization. The concourse of these three substances forms the body. In different parts of his works, Paracelsus says, that the elements are composed of these three principles. In plants he calls the salt balsam, the sulphur resin and the mercury gotaronium. In other passages he opposes the assertion of the Galenists, that fire is dry and hot, air cold and moist, earth dry and cold, water moist and cold. Each of these elements, he says, is capable of admitting all qualities, so that in reality there exists a dry water, a cold fire, &c.
I must not omit another remarkable physiological doctrine of Paracelsus, namely, that there exists in the stomach a demon called Archæus, who presides over the chemical operations which take place in it, separating the poisonous from the nutritive part of food, and furnishing the alimentary substances with the tincture, in consequence of which they become capable of being assimilated. This ruler of the stomach, who changes bread into blood, is the type of the physician, who ought to keep up a good understanding with him, and lend him his assistance. To produce a change in the humours ought never to be the object of the true physician, he should endeavour to concentrate all his operations on the stomach and the ruler who reigns in it. This Archæus to whom the name of Nature may also be given, produces all the changes by his own power. It is he alone who cures diseases. He has a head and hands, and is nothing else than the spirit of life, the sideric body of man, and no other spirit besides exists in the body. Each part of the body has also a peculiar stomach in which the secretions are elaborated.
There are, he informs us, five different causes of diseases. The first is the ens astrorum. The constellations do not immediately induce diseases, but they alter and infect the air. This is what, properly speaking constitutes the entity of the stars. Some constellations sulphurize the atmosphere, others communicate to it arsenical, saline, or mercurial qualities. The arsenical astral entities injure the blood, the mercurial the head, the saline the bones and the vessels. Orpiment occasions tumours and dropsies, and the bitter stars induce fever.
The second morbific cause is the ens veneni, which proceeds from alimentary substances: when the archeus is languid putrefaction ensues, either localiter or emuncturaliter. This last takes place when those evacuations, which ought to be expelled by the nose, the intestines, or the bladder, are retained in the body. Dissolved mercury escapes through the pores of the skin, white sulphur by the nose, arsenic by the ears, sulphur diluted with water by the eyes, salt in solution by the urine, and sulphur deliquesced by the intestines.
The third morbific cause of disease is the ens naturale; but Paracelsus subjects to the ens astrorum the principles which the schools are in the habit of arranging among the number of natural causes. The ens spirituale forms the fourth species and the ens deale or Christian entity the fifth. This last class comprehends all the immediate effects of divine predestination.
It would lead us too far if I were to point out the strange methods which he takes to discover the cause of diseases. But his doctrine concerning tartar is too important, and does our fanatic too much credit to be omitted. It is without doubt the most useful of all the innovations which he introduced. Tartar according to him, is the principle of all the maladies proceeding from the thickening of the humours, the rigidity of the solids, or the accumulation of earthy matter. Paracelsus thought the term stone not suitable to indicate that matter, because it applies only to one species of it. Frequently the principle proceeds from mucilage, and mucilage is tartar. He calls this principle tartar (tartarus) because it burns like hellfire, and occasions the most dreadful diseases. As tartar (bitartrate of potash) is deposited at the bottom of the wine-cask, in the same way tartar in the living body is deposited on the surface of the teeth. It is deposited on the internal parts of the body when the archæus acts with too great impetuosity and in an irregular manner, and when it separates the nutritive principle with too much impetuosity. Then the saline spirit unites itself to it and coagulates the earthy principle, which is always present, but often in the state of materia prima without being coagulated.
In this manner tartar, in the state of materia prima, may be transmitted from father to son. But it is not hereditary and transmittable when it has already assumed the form of gout, of renal calculus, or of obstruction. The saline spirit which gives it its form, and causes its coagulation, is seldom pure and free from mixture; usually it contains alum, vitriol, or common salt; and this mixture contributes also to modify the tartarous diseases. The tartar may be likewise distinguished according as it comes from the blood itself, or from foreign matters accumulated in the humours. The great number of calculi which have been found in every part of the body, and the obstructions, confirm the generality of this morbific cause, to which are due most of the diseases of the liver. When the tartarous matter is increased by certain articles of food, renal calculi are engendered, a calculous paroxysm is induced, and violent pain is occasioned. It acts as an emetic, and may even give occasion to death, when the saline spirit becomes corrosive; and when the tartar coagulated by it becomes too irritating.
Tartar, then, is always an excrementitious substance, which in many cases results from the too great activity of the digestive forces. It may make its appearance in all parts of the body, from the irregularity and the activity, too energetic or too indolent, of the archeus; and then it occasions particular accidents relative to each of the functions. Paracelsus enumerates a great number of diseases of the organs, which may be explained by that one cause; and affirms, that the profession of medicine would be infinitely more useful, if medical men would endeavour to discover the tartar before they tried to explain the affections.
Paracelsus points out, also, the means by which we can distinguish the presence of tartar in urine. For this it is necessary, not merely to inspect the urine, but to subject it to a chemical analysis. He declaims violently against the ordinary ouroscopy. He divides urine into internal and external; the internal comes from the blood, and the external announces the nature of the food and drink which has been employed. To the sediment of urine he gives the new name of alcola, and admits three species of it, namely, hypostasis, divulsio, and sedimen. The first is connected with the stomach, the second with the liver, and the third with the kidneys; and tartar predominates in all the three.
The Cabala constantly directs Paracelsus in his therapeutics and materia medica. As all terrestrial things have their image in the region of the stars, and as diseases depend also on the influence of the stars, we have nothing more to do, in order to obtain a certain cure for these diseases, than to discover, by means of the Cabala, the harmony of the constellations. Gold is a specific against all diseases of the heart, because, in the mystic scale, it is in harmony with that viscus. The liquor of the moon and crystal cure the diseases of the brain. The liquor alkahest and cheiri are efficacious against those of the liver. When we employ vegetable substances, we must consider their harmony with the constellations, and their magical harmony with the parts of the body and the diseases, each star drawing, by a sort of magical virtue, the plant for which it has an affinity, and imparting to it its activity. So that plants are a kind of sublunary stars. To discover the virtues of plants, we must study their anatomy and cheiromancy; for the leaves are their hands, and the lines observable on them enable us to appreciate the virtues which they possess. Thus the anatomy of the chelidonium shows us that it is a remedy for jaundice. These are the celebrated signatures by means of which we deduce the virtues of vegetables, and the medicines of analogy which they present in relation to their form. Medicines, like women, are known by the forms which they affect. He who calls in question this principle, accuses the Divinity of falsehood, the infinite wisdom of whom has contrived these external characters to bring the study of them more upon a level with the weakness of the human understanding. On the corolla of the euphrasia there is a black dot; from this we may conclude that it furnishes an excellent remedy against all diseases of the eye. The lizard has the colour of malignant ulcers, and of the carbuncle; this points out the efficacy which that animal possesses as a remedy.
These signatures were exceedingly convenient for the fanatics, since they saved them the trouble of studying the medical virtues of plants, but enabled them to decide the subject à priori. Paracelsus acted very considerately, when he ascribed these virtues principally to the stars, and affirmed that the observation of favourable constellations is an indispensable condition in the employment of these medicines. “The remedies are subjected to the will of the stars, and directed by them; you ought therefore to wait till heaven is favourable, before ordering a medicine.”
Paracelsus considered all the effects of plants as specifics, and the use of them as secrets. The same notions explain the eulogy which he bestowed on the elixir of long life, and upon all the means which he employed to prolong the term of existence. He believed that these methods, which contained the materia prima, served to repair the constant waste of that matter in the human body. He was acquainted, he says, with four of these arcana, to which he applied the mystic terms, mercury of life, philosopher’s stone, &c. The polygonum persicaria was an infallible specific against all the effects of magic. The method of using it is, to apply it to the suffering part, and then to bury it in the earth. It draws out the malignant spirits like a magnet, and it is buried to prevent these malignant spirits from making their escape.
The reformation of Paracelsus had the great advantage of representing chemistry as an indispensable art in the preparation of medicines. The disgusting decoctions and useless syrups gave place to tinctures, essences, and extracts. Paracelsus says, expressly, that the true use of chemistry is to prepare medicines, and not to make gold. He takes that opportunity of declaiming against cooks and innkeepers, who drown medicines in soup, and thus destroy all their properties. He blames medical men for prescribing simples, or mixtures of simples, and affirms that the object should always be to extract the quintessence of each substance; and he describes at length the method of extracting this quintessence. But he was very little scrupulous about the substances from which this quintessence was to be extracted. The heart of a hare, the bones of a hare, the bone of the heart of a stag, mother-of-pearl, coral, and various other bodies may, he says, be used indiscriminately to furnish a quintessence capable of curing some of the most grievous diseases.
Paracelsus combats with peculiar energy the method of cure employed by the disciples of Galen, directed solely against the predominating humours, and the elementary qualities. He blames them for attempting to correct the action of their medicines, by the addition of useless ingredients. Fire and chemistry, he affirmed, are the sole correctives. It was Paracelsus that first introduced tin as a remedy for worms, though his mode of employing it was not good.
I have been thus particular in pointing out the philosophical and medical opinions of Paracelsus, because they were productive of such important consequences, by setting medical men free from the slavish deference which they had been accustomed to pay to the dogmas of Galen and Avicenna. But it was the high rank to which he raised chemistry, by making a knowledge of it indispensable to all medical men; and by insisting that the great importance of chemistry did not consist in the formation of gold, but in the preparation of medicines, that rendered the era of Paracelsus so important in the history of chemistry; for after his time the art of chemistry was cultivated by medical men in general—it became a necessary part of their education, and began to be taught in colleges and medical schools. The object of chemistry came to be, not to discover the philosopher’s stone, but to prepare medicines; and a great number of new medicines, both from the mineral and vegetable kingdom—some of more, some of less, consequence, soon issued from the laboratories of the chemical physicians.
There can be little doubt that many chemical preparations were either first introduced into medicine by Paracelsus, or at least were first openly prescribed by him: though from the nature of his writings, and the secrecy in which he endeavoured to keep his most valuable remedies, it is not easy to point out what these remedies were. Mercury is said to have been employed in medicine by Basil Valentine; but it was Paracelsus who first used it openly as a cure for the venereal disease, and who drew general attention to it by his encomiums on its medical virtues, and by the eclat of the cures which he performed by means of it, after all the Galenical prescriptions of the schools had been tried in vain.
He ascertained that alum contains, united to an acid, not a metallic oxide, but an earth. He mentions metallic arsenic; but there is some reason for believing that this metal was known to Geber and the Arabian physicians. Zinc is mentioned by him, and likewise bismuth, as substances not truly metallic, but approaching to metals in their properties: for malleability and ductility were considered by him as essential to the metals.159 I cannot be sure of any other chemical fact which appears in Paracelsus, and which was not known before his time. The use of sal ammoniac in subliming several metallic calces, was familiar to him, but it had long ago been explained by Geber. It is clear also that Geber was acquainted with aqua regia, and that he employed it to dissolve gold. Paracelsus’s reputation as a chemist, therefore, depends not upon any discoveries which he actually made, but upon the great importance which he attached to the knowledge of it, and to his making an acquaintance with chemistry an indispensable requisite of a medical education.
Paracelsus, as the founder of a new system of medicine, the object of which was to draw chemistry out of that state of obscurity and degradation into which it had been plunged, and to give it the charge of the preparation of medicine, and presiding over the whole healing art, deserved a particular notice; and I have even endeavoured, at some length, to lay his system of opinions, absurd as it is, before the reader. But the same attention is not due to the herd of followers who adopted his absurdities, and even carried them, if possible, still further than their master: at the same time there are one or two particulars connected with the Paracelsian sect which it would be improper to omit.
The most celebrated of his followers was Leonhard Thurneysser-zum-Thurn, who was born in 1530, at Basle, where his father was a goldsmith. His life, like that of his master, was checkered with very extraordinary vicissitudes. In 1560 he was sent to Scotland to examine the lead-mines in that country. In 1558 he commenced miner and sulphur extractor at Tarenz on the Inn, and was so successful, that he acquired a great reputation. He had turned his attention to medicine on the Paracelsian plan, and in 1568 made himself distinguished by several important cures which he performed. In 1570 he published his Quinta Essentia, with wooden cuts, in Munster; from thence he went to Frankfort on the Oder, and published his Piso, a work which treats of waters, rivers, and springs. John George, Elector of Brandenburg, was at that time in Frankfort, and was informed that the treatise of Thurneysser pointed out the existence of a great deal of riches in the March of Brandenburg, till that time unknown. His courtiers, who were anxious to establish mines in their possessions, united in recommending the author. He was consulted about a disease under which the wife of the elector was labouring, and having performed a cure, he was immediately named physician to this prince.
He turned this situation to the best account. He sold Spanish white, and other cosmetics, to the ladies of the court; and instead of the disgusting decoctions of the Galenists, he administered the remedies of Paracelsus under the pompous titles of tincture of gold, magistery of the sun, potable gold, &c. By these methods he succeeded in amassing a prodigious fortune, but was not fortunate enough to be able to keep it. Gaspard Hoffmann, professor at Frankfort, a well-informed and enlightened man, published a treatise, the object of which was to expose the extravagant pretensions and ridiculous ignorance of Thurneysser. This book drew the attention of the courtiers, and opened the eyes of the elector. Thurneysser lost much of his reputation; and the methods by which he attempted to bolster himself up, served only to sink him still lower in the estimation of men of sense. Among other things, he gave out that he was the possessor of a devil, which he carried about with him in a bottle. This pretended devil was nothing else than a scorpion, preserved in a phial of oil. The trick was discovered, and the usual consequences followed. He lost a process with his wife, from whom he was separated; this deprived him of the greatest part of his fortune. In 1584 he fled to Italy, where he occupied himself with the transmutation of metals, and he died at Cologne in 1595.
Thurneysser extols Paracelsus as the only true physician that ever existed. His Quintessence is written in verse. In the first book The Secret is the speaker. He is represented with a padlock in his mouth, a key in his hand, and seated on a coffer in a chamber, the windows of which are shut. This personage teaches that all things are composed of salt, sulphur, and mercury, or of earth, air, and water; and consequently that fire is excluded from the number of the elements. We must search for the secret in the Bible, and then in the stars and the spirits. In the second book, Alchymy is the speaker. She points out the mode of performing the processes; and says that to endeavour to fix volatile substances, is the same thing as to endeavour to trace white letters on a wall with a piece of charcoal. She prohibits all long processes, because God created the world in six days.
His method of judging of the diseases from the urine of the patient deserves to be mentioned. He distilled the urine, and fixed to the receiver a tube furnished with a scale, the degrees of which consisted of all the parts of the body. The phenomena which he observed during the distillation of the urine, enabled him to draw inferences respecting the state of all these different organs.
I pass over Bodenstein, Taxites, and Dorn, who distinguished themselves as partisans of Paracelsus. Dorn derived the whole of chemistry from the first chapter of Genesis, the words of which he explained in an alchymistical sense. These words in particular, “And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament,” appeared to him to be an account of the great work. Severinus, physician to the King of Denmark, and canon of Roskild, was also a celebrated partisan of Paracelsus; but his writings do not show either that knowledge or stretch of thought which would enable us to account for the reputation which he acquired and enjoyed.
There were very few partisans of Paracelsus out of Germany. The most celebrated of his followers among the French, was Joseph du Chesne, better known by the name of Quercitanus, who was physician to Henry IV. He was a native of Gascony, and drew many enemies upon himself by his arrogant and overbearing conduct. He pretended to be acquainted with the method of making gold. He was a thorough-going Paracelsian. He affirmed that diseases, like plants, spring from seeds. The word alchymy, according to him, is composed of the two Greek words ἁλς (salt) and χημεια, because the great secret is concealed in salt. All bodies are composed of three principles, as God is of three substances. These principles are contained in saltpetre, the salts of sulphur solid and volatile, and the volatile mercurial salt. He who possesses sal generalis may easily produce philosophical gold, and draw potable gold from the three kingdoms of nature. To prove the possibility of this transmutation, he cites an experiment very often repeated after him, and which some theologians have even employed as analogous to the resurrection of the dead; namely, the faculty which plants have of being produced from their ashes. His materia medica is founded on the signatures of plants, which he carries so far as to assert that male plants are more suitable to men, and female plants to women. Sulphuric acid, he says, has a magnetic virtue, in consequence of which it is capable of curing the epilepsy. He recommends the magisterium cranii humani as an excellent medicine, and boasts much of the virtues of antimony.