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ledge from the astrological and other chimeras with which it was mingled, besides that he has been made answerable for a multitude of absurd writings, in which he had no share whatever. At all events his fame blazed forth for awhile like some extraordinary meteor, astonishing the people while it excited the bitterest hostility amongst his rivals. It was not, however, his empiricism they hated, for they themselves were all more or less empirics, but his greater success, with high and low, rich and poor, besides that he had scoffed at the Dagons of their idolatry, and, though himself in darkness. and only introducing a new form of error, had at least shown that their ways were not the ways of truth. While they repeated the dogmas of the old school, and despatched people according to the established laws of medicine, he ventured upon a new path, picked up recipes everywhere and experimented with them upon the human body, killing or curing as the fates would have it. Theirs was a learned ignorance built upon books, and they never killed a patient without being able to quote chapter and verse from the ancients for their misdoings. His was a practical ignorance, and it would be absurd to deny that he often stumbled upon the truth, and effected cures without at all comprehending their rationale. He was like the mechanic, who puts together the finest instruments without understanding the laws of geoinetry. But unfortunately for him he had pitched his claims too high, and by pretending to infallibility exposed his title to be shaken at the first breath of ill-success. Other physicians limited their pretensions, and the exact amount of their ignorance therefore was less liable to be detected; but in his case the system was altogether true or altogether false; there could be no medium, no escape; and hence a few failures, proceeding from the injudicious use of Jaudanum, were enough to give a mortal blow to his

reputation. It is likely enough too that these accidents were the more readily believed and magnified from the general offence given by the excessive rudeness of his manners. This was a fault of which nothing could cure him; he gloried in it ;* and reproached the courtesy of other physicians as a glaring proof of their want of merit. Intemperance was a yet more serious charge, and we are compelled to believe it true, since it rests upon the authority of Oporinus,† that faithful friend and disciple, who left wife and home to follow him in his wanderings, and was not to be deterred even by the drunkenness and poverty of his preceptor, for poor he often was in spite of the philosopher's stone. According to the account he has left us, and which has not failed to be quoted by all the opponents of Paracelsus, the philosopher and physician spent whole nights in public houses amongst the lowest dregs of the people, not taking off his clothes for weeks together even when he did go to bed, such was his habitual intoxication. Often, too, he would rise in the middle of the night, in a state that might well be called rabid, hacking and hewing about him with his long sword, which on such occasions never left him, and which he boasted to have got from the common executioner. Poor Oporinus honestly confesses that in the acting of these antics he frequently trembled for his life, as well he might, if the story be as he tells it. How his patients and pupils endured the doctor is the wonder, for it seems he had not the better part of drunkenness, which like the better part of valour is discretion, but would attend both the sick and the lecture-room when in a

Erster Theil der Bücher und Schriften des P. T. Paracelsus.— p. 142. Qrto. Basel.

+ Oporin, or Oporinus, was a learned printer of Bale, who, like the more celebrated Stephens, wrote as well as printed, and in his day had some reputation for scholarship.

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complete state of inebriety; nay it was his custom, if he could persuade them to it, to make his invalids partake of these orgies, that he might cure them, as he said, upon a full stomach, a practice that probably did not seem quite so outrageous in those times of hard living as it might in the present day. Many instances are related of the easy impudence with which he treated those who invoked his medical aid, and the following, given by Sprengel, is not the least pointed. He tells us, that Paracelsus upon one occasion, after a night of debauchery, being called in to a patient, he went as usual, unconscious of his situation, or indifferent to it, when the first question he asked on entering the room was, whether the sick person had taken anything of late. "Nothing," was the reply, Hereupon our Doctor turned upon his heel, exclaiming, "then you don't want me, you have got another physician." But this levity of speech ill accords with his general professions, for though he was accused of Arianism and of being a contemner of church mysteries, yet he made religion the basis of all art, insisting repeatedly as he does in the OCCULT PHILOSOPHY, "that the foundation of these and all other arts be laid in the holy Scriptures, upon the doctrine and faith of Christ, which is the most firm and sure foundation, and the chiefe corner-stone, whereupon the three points of this philosophy are grounded.' "'* To be sure this mixing up of religion with every thing did not save him from the censure of his adversaries. It was contended that many of his dogmas were impious, and amongst other things, Sennert makes it the ground of heavy accusation against him, that he maintained homunculi might be generated by chemical means only, and that the giants and pigmies of other days had been * Paracelsus of the Supreme Mysteries of Nature-PrologueBy R. Turner. 1655.

so called into existence, with a knowledge of things far beyond that of ordinary men. Erastus is even worse, and marshals in array seven distinct dogmas, which he pronounces blasphemous.*

He now quarrelled with the magistrates of Bale, who had decided against him in a cause, which he had instituted upon a patient's refusing to pay the fee demanded for curing him of the gout. In consequence of his libels against his judges he was obliged to fly, and for years after led a wandering life, being now settled for a short time in one place, and now in another. His fame, however, visibly declined, and his hitherto faithful followers began to fall off, a circumstance which was not. forgotten by his enemies in their attacks upon him. To these he cavalierly replied, "complaints have been made by some of my runaway servants and pupils, that none of them could stay with me on account of my odd ways. Now mark my answer. The hangman has taken to himself one and twenty of my flock, and helped them off to the other world-Heaven speed them all-how can a man remain with me if the hangman will not let him? Or what have my odd ways done to them? if they had avoided the hangman's ways, that would have been the true art." +

* Erasti Disp. p. 144, et seq.

+ Weiter ist auch ein klag ab mir von meinen verlassnen knechten etlichs theils und Discipulis auch etlichs theils das ihr keiner meiner wunderlicher weiss halben kön bey mir bleibe. Da merckent mein antwort. Der Hencker hat mir zu seinen gnaden genommen ein und zwenzig Knecht und von diser Welt abgethan Gott helff ihn allen. Wie kan einer bey mir bleiben so in der Hencker nicht bey mir lassen will? oder was hatt ihnen mein wunderliche weiss gethan? hetten sie den Hencker sein weiss geflohen wer die rechte kunst gewesen. Erster Theil der Bücher und Schriften des P. T. Bombast von Hohenhein, Paracelsi genannt, p. 143. Basel. 1589.

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In the same strain he goes on through pages, inveighing alike against doctors, barber-surgeons, apothecaries, ard pupils, all of whom filch his secrets, get possession of his patients, and then complain of his strange humours; upon which he reasonably enough asks, "solt das ein Lamb machen?—is that likely to make a lamb of one?” -We should think not; but the doctors of the present day can best answer the question.

Of the remainder of his life we know little, except that it was spent in constant strife with his enemies, whose numbers appear to have increased with his declining reputation. Nor was their enmity confined to words alone, a coin in which our doctor was fully able to repay them, for it seems highly probable that he met with a violent end. Sennert, whom I have so often referred to, and who, though very little known, is full of curious matter, but in an antique garb, notices a report which emanated from Crollius,* of his enemies having taken him off by poison; he adds, however, that the belief rests upon no sufficient testimony, and that it was much more probable Paracelsus died of drunkenness and gluttony,† from which assumed premises he draws the very ingenious inference, that he could hardly have possessed the philosopher's stone, since he was unable to cure himself. He adds too, we know not upon what authority, that for many years before his decease, Paracelsus remained convulsed and contracted, and finally died at the early age of forty-seven. Sprengel, however, gives from Hessling another version of his death; he says that our philosopher being at a banquet, the servants and other ruffians in the employ of his medical enemies hurled him down from a

* Crollius followed close in the footsteps of Paracelsus, and wrote "Four Tractates on Philosophy Reformed and Improved." I have never seen this work except in Pinnell's translation, London, 1657. †D. Sennerti Opera, p. 192. Fol. Lugduni, 1676.

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