SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 137 



cerebral-shaped pistil, cures paralysis of the brain, etc. To go deeper into 

 these fantastic ideas is hardly worth while; what has already been stated may 

 seetn to many readers more than enough of such nonsense. Nevertheless, 

 Paracelsus 's influence has been both wide and deep. In medicine he was in 

 many respects a pioneer; he did his best to treat wounds hygienically and 

 otherwise to leave them in peace; owing to his belief in specific causes of 

 diseases, he sought for a single cure for each disease, and several of his 

 methods proceeding on these lines still hold good, especially the use of 

 mercury in the treatment of syphilis; moreover, this aim of his formed a con- 

 trast to Galen's and his followers' disastrous attempts to create universal 

 medicines to be used for all diseases and composed of everything imaginable. 

 Even modern biology is based, at least in one respect, on a principle laid 

 dovv^n by Paracelsus; his conception of life-phenomena as fundamentally 

 chemical processes has without doubt paved the way for modern physiology, 

 which certainly could not develop before chemical science had been freed 

 from the primitive mysticism in which it was veiled in the time of Paracelsus 

 and for a hundred years after him, but which in any case represented a more 

 stimulating starting-point for the modern idea of substance conversion in the 

 body than the Aristotelean "cooking" theory, which even Vesalius accepted. 

 Further, the conception of life as a mystical force uniting the whole of exist- 

 ence, which Paracelsus, it is true, did not actuafly found, but developed and 

 stamped with his own original personality, has never, in spite of its many 

 fallacies and absurdities, succeeded in being entirely suppressed. Time and 

 again it has been thrust aside by some more exact research based upon actual 

 facts and referred to the vast public of the dilettanti and mountebanks, but 

 it never really died out, so that at certain times — for instance, during the 

 romantic period at the beginning of the last century — it revived with 

 renewed vigour. And during such periods Paracelsus's reputation has been 

 freshly enhanced. At all events, history cannot but acknowledge the fertile 

 genius, the splendid character — in spite of its many exaggerations — and 

 the force of will with which Paracelsus throughout a life of adversity and 

 distress fought for what he considered to be the supreme aim of science. 



Paracelsus was not very fortunate in his disciples. Cultured people could 

 not endure his presence for long, and the riff-raff he gathered about him dur- 

 ing his wanderings was not suitable material for a scientific school. His chief 

 influence was exerted by his writings, which were read eagerly and produced 

 a mass of imitations, wherein the defects rather than the merits of the true 

 Paracelsian writings were conspicuous, and which, published under the 

 master's name, contributed more than anything else to lower his reputation. 

 The principal successor to Paracelsus appeared about a generation after his 

 death, a philosopher who extracted from his writings ana still further dc' 

 veloped his peculiar conception of life and its functions. 



