The Delta independent., 1889-09-24
LIFE-ELIxIRISTS.

OF Time nave Claimed W discover
conservator of youth have been as
honest in their work as he. The no.
,orious Count Gag liostro. whose name
is still synonymous with fraud. was en-
l.bled to carry on his gigantic swindles
by pretending among other things that
ne had discovered an .'elixir OF i'm
mortal youth.
Cagliostro, who flourished in the lat
ter part Of the eighteenth century, did
. lively business in the elixir" that
was especially popular with tho ladies.
Cagliostro assured his dupes that by
virtue of the specific he had already
STAINED his 150th year and his charm
ting wife, his accomplice in the swim
lie, often talked affectionately of her
kon as an 'officer in the Dutch navy"
He. and his wife conducted
triumphant tour through Europe until
they struck the court of St. Peters
burg, where the Empress Catherine
and her Scotch physician, Rogerson,
who were skeptical concerning elixirs.
faw through their deception and they
disappeared. They came up again in
another part of Europe and carried on
;heir scheme of fraud with varying
,uccess until Cagliostro was put in Jail
in Roma for Freemasonry. In spite of
the virtue OF his elixir of immortal
youth" he died in the fortress OF San
Leone in his SD year. His wife end
cd her days in a convent.
Albertus Magnus, who was born in
the latter part of the twelfth century,
gained 30 extensive knowledge Cf
chemistry that he was commonly
reputed to be sorcerer and many
legends of wonder have come down at
tached to his name.
Roger Bacon, who was one OF the
earliest scientific inauirers in the relm
OF the mysterious. fourished in the
thirteenth century, though his mind
was SO remarkably able and his
intuitions so clear that he is regarded
as having lived four centuries before
his time. He was for all practical
purposes modern thinker, whose con-
ception OF science was just and clear.
though very little is known of his life
thcre. He went over to Paris and took
the degree Of doctor of theology, and
in 1850 was back in Oxford. He was
full Of vim and aggressive in contro-
versy. OF course he got into trouble
nm account OF his books and spent four
leen years in prison. He wrote an
enormous number of works, though his
best known was his "Opus Majus."
He was firm believer in astrology
and the philosophers stone. and is re-
ported to have said that he knew that
the circle had been squared.
Paracelsus was another mysterious
genius OF the past, who with a great
wind CROPPED in the gloomy cham bers
u knowledge, and of course often went
astray. He gave up all the studies OF
the schools and set out through the
worfds travelling Hike, q journeyman
scholar, and studying, as he said. from
nature herself. He spent years study
Ing all the phenomena of mines and
the diseases that affected miners. or
course he acquired good deal of
knowledge that other people did not
possess, and his belief in himself was
so complete that by sheer force Of self
confidence he forced others to listen to
md have faith in him.
He had his own theories concerning
the makeup and the moods of nature.
His eagerness to understand the re-
lationship OF man to the universe led
him to the Kabbala, where these
mysteries, as he thought, are explain
ed, and from these unsubstantial
materials he constructed visionary
philosophy.
Defective as they may have been
and unfounded on fact his Kabbalistic
doctrines led him to trace the depend
ence Of the human body upon outer
nature for its sustenance and cure.
The doctrine OF signatures, the con-
nection OF every part of the little
world Of man with corresponding
part Of the great world of nature, was
painful and false exaggeration of
this doctrine, but the idea carried in
its train that OF specifics. Paracelsus
had seen how bodies were purified and
intensified by chemical operations and
he thought il plants and minerals
could be made to yield their active
principles it would surely be better to
employ these than the crude and I'M
prepared originals. He had, besides,
: by some kind of intuition, arrived at
the conclusion that the operations of
the body were of n chemical character
and that when disordered they were to
be put right by counter oppositions of
the same kind. Technically he was
not chemist. He did not concern
himself either with the composition of
his compounds or with an explanation
OF what occurred in their making. II
he could get potent drugs to cure dis
:-eases he was content and he worked
very hard in an empirical way to make
them. He was probably a believer.
too, in the philosophers stone, the
fetch of his age.
Ponce de Leon, though he was no
chemist, had an abiding faith that an
elixir OF youth flowed in fountain
g.. II.