palmistry, evoking the dead, and trying all sorts of chemical experiments that he had learnt from the miners of various districts. If too we may believe the various accounts that have come down to us, he even extended his visits to Egypt and Muscovy, and when on the confines of the latter he was taken prisoner by the Tartars and carried before their Khan. By some means, not very clearly explained, or indeed not explained at all, he obtained his liberty, and passed over with the Khan's son to Constantinople for the purpose of learning the secret of the Elixir Vitæ from Trismolin, who at the time was residing there. Nor did he confine his curious enquiries to the learned, for whom by the bye he never seems to have entertained too much respect, but eagerly sought for information amongst the necromancers, alchymists, old women-the distinction is not very evident—and from the noble and ignoble. The result of all these enquiries and wanderings was that, according to his own account, at the age of twenty-eight he had obtained the philosopher's stone from an alchymist, and acquired so great a name by his numerous cures amongst nobles and princes, as well as amongst the poor, that in 1526 he was elected professor of physic and surgery in the university of Basel.* It might, perhaps, however have contributed to his ele vation, that just at this time the introduction of the reformed religion into Basel + had stript the university of its old teachers, who had left it either for consciencesake, or from compulsion.

The head of Paracelsus seems now to have been completely turned by inordinate vanity. In the November of this year we find him writing to Christopher Clauser, a physician in Zurich, "he should only compare him with * I. Van Helmont, Opera: Hist. Tartari, p. 222; and Sprengel, v. iii. p. 432.

† Or, as our modern geographers choose to call it, Bale, deriving the name from the French Basle, instead of from the German Basel.

Hippocrates, Galen, Rasi, and Marsilius Ficinus-that every country produced its eminent physician, whose theories were precisely suited to the land in which he was born. The Archaus,* or genius of Greece, had given birth to Hippocrates; the Archaus, or genius of Arabia, to Rasi; the Archaus of Italy, to Ficinus; and that of Germany had produced him, Paracelsus." With this conceit of his own "ingine," as Ben Jonson would call it, he commenced his lectures by openly burning in his lecture-room the works of Galen and Avicenna. But there must have been both natural talent and acquired knowledge amidst all this bombast and self-conceit, for it is plain he effected many cures, and even attracted the notice of Erasmus, who did not hesitate to consult him upon the state of his health. Even if it be true, as Sprengel affirms, that he had no time to study books deeply, still he had seen much practice, and must in his travels have picked up a vast fund of current information upon medical topics. We should recollect, too, that in his day the lecture room and conversation with the learned supplied in a great measure the deficiency of books, besides which he had served as an army surgeon for years in a variety of campaigns, and must at least have had a practical knowledge of his art. The great difficulty in estimating his character is to forget his absurd pretensions and to separate the better part of his know

* Paracelsus was amazingly fond of calling old things by new names, and hence it is not always easy to understand exactly what he means, even supposing him at all times to have understood himself. In regard to Archaus, we are told by Sennert, "nihil aliud istud vocabulum significat quam quod in scholiis philosophorum et medicorum facultatem et virtutem naturalem, aut, si mavis, spiritum naturalem, facultatis naturalis ministrum, nominamus-(Sennerti Op. p. 193.)-that word signifies nothing else than what in the schools of philosophy and medicine we call the natural faculty and virtue, or, if you prefer it, the natural spirit, the servant of the natural faculty."

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 geometry. 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 laudanum, 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, except the sacrament.” 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-Prologue— By R. Turner. 1655.