Failing to find in the universities advanced thought and 

 new methods, those who were determined to gain superior 

 acquirements substituted for their conservative teachings long 

 and distant travels, extending through years and to Oriental 

 countries, "whereby the wanderers came in contact with 

 learned men of different schools, and became acquainted with 

 the newest discoveries and improvements in medicine, phar- 

 macy and the natural sciences. There was no periodical press 

 in those days, and like the Athenians and strangers of old 

 they assembled in the market-places of many cities to tell or 

 to hear some new thing. Pierre Belon, a French physician, 

 travelled for three j^ears in Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt and 

 Arabia, and brought back with him a fund of knowledge 

 concerning medicinal plants and useful drugs. 



Paracelsus, that "strange and paradoxical genius," re- 

 garded by some as a most unprincipled quack and by others 

 as a beneficent reformer of medical art, acquired most of his 

 unquestioned knowledge by travelling in many parts of the 

 world and consulting monks, conjurers, barber-surgeons and 

 empirics reputed to possess secret remedies; becoming aware 

 of the virtues of opium and mercury he effected many aston- 

 ishing cures, but this vain-glorious, self-styled "monarch of 

 physicians," clothed his really original ideas in "fantastic 

 boasting and superstitious rhodomontade"; moreover his 

 doctrines were imbued with theosophy, kabbalism and neo- 

 platonic philosophy, and his disciples failed to separate the 

 wheat from the chaff. Nevertheless under their influence the 

 pharmacopoeia began to improve, especially by the introduc- 

 tion of inorganic chemical preparations; "Chemistry," said 

 Paracelsus, "is not designed to make gold but medicines." 

 Nevertheless his practices gave Butler occasion to write: 



"Bombastus kept a Devil's Bird 

 Shut in the pommel of his sword 

 That taught him all the cunning pranks 

 Of past and future mountebanks." 



106 



