PARACELSUS, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus, a famous alchemist and enthusiast of the sixteenth century, was born in 1493, at Einsiedeln, a small town of the canton of Schwitz, distant some leagues from Zurich. His father, who practised medicine at Villach in Carinthia, was a near relative of George Bombast de Hohenheim, who afterwards became grand-prior of the order of Malta; so that Paracelsus was not sprung from the dregs of the people, as his sworn enemy, Erastus, pretends. His early education appears to have been neglected, and he passed a part of his youth leading the life of a strolling schoolman of that period; in other words, he wandered from country to country, predicting future events by inspecting the stars and the lines of the hand, conjuring up the dead, and repeating various operations in alchemy and magic, into which he had been initiated either by his father, or by different ecclesiastics, amongst whom he mentions the abbot Trithcim, and several German bishops. As Paracelsus everywhere shows himself ignorant of the most common and elementary parts of knowledge, it is not probable that he had ever seriously studied in the schools. He contented himself with visiting the universities of Germany, France, and Italy; and although he boasts of having been the ornament of these schools, there is no evidence of his having legitimately acquired the title of doctor, which he chose to assume. All we know is, that he laboured for a long time in the house of a certain rich man, named Sigismond Fugger de Schwatz, in order to learn from him the secret of the philosopher’s stone. According to the usage of the alchemists, Paracelsus travelled into the mountains of Bohemia, Sweden, and the East, to inspect the labours of the miners, get himself initiated into the mysteries of the oriental adepts, and observe the wonders of nature, particularly the celebrated magnetic mountain. He is also said to have traversed Spain, Portugal, France, Prussia, Poland, and Transylvania, communicating not only with the physicians, but also with the old women, quacks, and magicians of these different countries. It is even believed that he extended his travels as far as Egypt and Tartary, and that he accompanied the son of the Khan of the Tartars to Constantinople, in order to learn of a Greek who resided in that capital the secret of the tincture or elixir of Trismegistus. This vagabond life naturally left Paracelsus very little time for reading; and, in fact, he has himself stated, that during the space of ten years he .did not open a single book, and that all his medical library consisted of about a dozen pages. Nor did his desire of knowledge increase with his years; for an inventory made after his death shows, that the only books which he left behind him were a Bible, a Concordance, a New Testament, the Commentaries of St Jerome on the Gospels, a volume on medicine, and some seven manuscripts.
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It is not known at what period he returned to Germany; but it appears that, about the age of thirty-three, several remarkable cures, which he wrought on persons of distinction, gave him such celebrity, that in 1526, he was, on the recommendation of Oecolampadius, called to fill the chair of physic and surgery in the university of Basil. Here Paracelsus commenced his career by burning publicly in the hall the works of Avicenna and Galen; assuring his auditors, that his shoe-ties knew more than these two physicians, that all the universities, and all the writers united, were less instructed than the hairs of his beard, and that he should be regarded as the sole monarch of physic. The novelty of his doctrine, the confidence with which he spoke of his success, the power to which he pretended of prolonging life, and curing the most inveterate diseases, and the use of the vulgar tongue in his discourses, attracted to Basil a crowd of credulous persons, equally indolent and enthusiastic. The prelections which he delivered on practical medicine have fortunately been preserved; they are in a mixed jargon of German and barbarous Latin, and contain nothing but a multitude of empirical remedies, indicated with the greatest pretension. So much impudence, however, far from diminishing his renown, served only to increase it, insomuch that Erasmus, who had long suffered from gravel, applied to Paracelsus; and this circumstance led to a correspondence (which has been preserved) between these two men, who enjoyed such opposite kinds of celebrity. But even at Basil people soon began to discover that the new professor was an impudent and presumptuous quack. Scarcely had a year elapsed when his prelections were deserted. As soon as the novelty wore off, his jargon was found to be incomprehensible, and his empiricism a mere cloak for ignorance. But what contributed more than any other cause to ruin his reputation was the crapulous life which he led. According to Oporin, who lived two years with him, he almost never appeared in his lecture-room without being half drunk, and seldom dictated to his secretaries except under the influence of wine. If called to visit a patient, he rarely did so without having first gorged himself with liquor. He had the custom of sleeping in his clothes, and sometimes passed whole nights in low taverns drinking with peasants, so that in the morning he had not the slightest recollection of what had passed during the night. On one occasion, however, having exceeded the ordinary license of his orgies, he assailed a magistrate with the grossest abuse; and, dreading punishment for such an outrage, found himself under the necessity of decamping from Basil, towards the end of the year 1527. He took refuge in Alsace, whither he was followed by his secretary Oporin, with all his chemical apparatus, and then resumed the same kind of strolling life which he had led in his youth.

Being thus cast loose again upon the world, he appeared at Colmar in 1528, at Nuremberg in 1529, at Saint-Gall in 1531, at Pfeffers in 1535, and at Augsburg in 1536. He then made some stay in Moravia, where he once more compromised his reputation by the loss of some distinguished patients, and was in consequence obliged to take his departure for Vienna. From that capital he passed into Hungary, and, in 1538, appeared at Villach, where he dedicated his Chronicle to the states of Carinthia, in gratitude for the favours which they had bestowed on his father. But his stay here appears to have been short; for, in 1540, we find him at Mindelheim, whence he pro- , ceeded to Saltzburg, the ultimate term of all his wanderings. On the 24th of September 1541 he died in the hospital of St Stephen at that place, in the forty-eighth year of his age, and in a state of abject poverty; notwithstanding he pretended to the possession of the double secret of transmuting metals, and prolonging life even to the extent of several centuries.

The life of this man forms a curious chapter in the history of self-delusion and imposture. Yet in order to judge rightly of Paracelsus, as well as of the reform which he wished to effect in medicine, it is necessary to dismiss all prejudice, and to disregard alike the hostility of Erastus and the exaggerations of Murr. It is also proper to keep in view the predominant spirit of the age in which he lived, and to remember that this epoch was famous for the reign of astrology and alchemy, the abuse of all sorts of superstitious practices, the apparition of spectres, ghosts, and hobgoblins, frequent demoniacal possessions, and the juggleries of a crowd of seers and fanatics, who, throughout all Europe, and particularly in Germany, practised on the credulity of the people. Such were the causes which prepared the way for the system of Paracelsus, and inflicts ed a severe blow on that of Galen. To speak in a vulgar language, to write rather for the people than for the learned, to introduce the cabbalistical art into medicine, as a substitute for that knowledge which is only acquired by study, to employ a crowd of mystical and barbarous terms, which make the greater impression on the multitude the less they are understood; such were the means of which Paracelsus availed himself, and which, but for his own indiscretion and misconduct, would most probably have been attended with triumphant success.

His philosophical and medical system is curious, even by reason of its absurdity. He takes as his primary supports religion and the sacred books. He assures us that the contemplation of the perfections of the Deity is sufficient to procure all knowledge and all wisdom; that the Holy Scriptures conduct to all kinds of truth; that the Bible furnishes a key to the theory of diseases; and that magical medicine can only be learned by the study of the Apocalypse. The man who blindly obeys the will of God, and who succeeds in identifying himself with the celestial intelligences, possesses the philosopher’s stone; he can cure all diseases, and can prolong his life at pleasure, because he holds in his possession the tincture which Adam and the patriarchs employed before the Deluge to prolong the term of human existence to eight or even nine centuries. Paracelsus professed the grossest pantheism. He admitted the existence of pure spirits without souls. According to him, all beings, even the minerals and fluids, take aliments and drink, and expel faeces. His physiological theory, a confused mass of the most incoherent ideas, is founded on the application of the law of the cabbala to the demonstration of the functions of the human body. The Sun has an influence on the heart, the Moon on the brain, Jupiter on the liver, Saturn on the spleen, Mercury on the lungs, Mars on the bile, and Venus on the kidneys and the organs of generation. Before attempting to explain the functions, or to cure diseases, the physician should know the planets of the microcosm, their meridian, their zodiac, their rising and setting; and it is by means of this knowledge that he attains to the discovery of the most hidden secrets of nature. The body is formed by the concourse of sidereal, that is, immaterial salt, sulphur, and mercury. Each of the elements may admit of all qualities, so that there may be dry water and cold fire. Another of his doctrines related to the archeus, a species of demon, which performed in the stomach the function of an alchemist, separating the poisonous matter contained in the aliments from that which serves the purpose of nutrition.

Nor was Paracelsus less absurd in his pathological theory. Returning always to magic, he assures us that it is the art of arts, and that from it all knowledge of medicine must be derived. He glories in passing for a magician, and even boasts that he had received from hell letters written by Galen, and had maintained, in the vestibule of that dreary region, keen disputes with Avicenna on porta [7:17:56]ble gold, the elixir of the philosophers, the quintessence, the mithridate, and the philosopher’s stone. He attributes diseases to five general causes, which he names entities, and which have relation to the astrological system; so that, instead of observing symptoms, a physician should consult the planets, in order to distinguish if the entity be divine, or astral, or natural, or spiritual, or poisonous. He declares that there is an essential difference between the diseases of men and those of women, because the uterus, as a microcosm within a microcosm, performs an important part in all the affections of women. To the menstrual blood he attributes the most extraordinary properties, particularly a poisonous quality. He explains each malady in particular by the help of his three principles of chemical entities, which he substitutes instead of the four elements of the ancients. In therapeutics and in materia medica his theory is altogether cabbalistical. He regards gold as a specific in all cases where the heart is the primary seat of the malady; recommends the study of anatomy and chiromancy in order to discover the virtues of vegetables; and states that, before employing any medicament, it is indispensable to observe the state of the constellations. In surgery he altogether rejected the use of cutting instruments, caustics, and even sutures, and pretended to cure fractures without bandages, by means only of comfrey. He employed the magnet in cases of haemorrhage, hysteria, epilepsy, and the greater part of the spasmodic affections; and extended more than ever the abuse of talismans. But amidst all this absurdity and extravagance, Paracelsus had the undoubted merit of attempting to introduce into medicine the use of antimonial, mercurial, and ferruginous preparations, which have so efficacious an action upon our organs; and it is equally certain that alchemy, which ruined so many adepts, proved advantageous to the medical sciences, by reason of the important discoveries which incidentally resulted from the numberless experiments made by its professors.

Paracelsus published very few works in his lifetime, and those which are attributed to him exhibit so many contradictions that several of them have been ascribed to his disciples. It would be a useless waste of space to enumerate the titles of all his works; we shall therefore content ourselves with indicating the different complete collections. 1. The German editions, Basil, 1575, in 8vo, ibid. 1589-1590, in ten vols. 4to, and Strasburg, 1603- 1618, in four vols. folio; 2. The Latin editions, Opera Omnia MedicoChymico Chirurgica, Francfort, 1603, in ten vols. 4to, and Geneva, 1658, in three vols. folio; 3. The French editions, La Grand Chirurgerie de Paracelse, Lyons, 1593 and 1603, in 4to, and Montbéliard, 1608, in 8vo. (See Adelung, Histoire de la Folie Humaine, tom. vii.; the Biographie Universelle, article Paracelse; and Sprengel, Histoire Pragmatique de la Médécine, tom. iii.) (a.)