4 



CHEMISTRY. 



H!tory. ings, in those benighted age* of ignorance, gained 

 V *^"Y~*' implicit credit, and the covetous were lilled with ri- 

 diculous desire* to enrich themselves by mrmns of 

 their di*>coveries. Thi laid the unwary open to the 

 tucks of a et of impostors, who went about the 

 world pretending th.it they were in possession of the 

 twirl of the philosophers' atone, and offering to com- 

 municate it to others for a nutahle reward. Thus 

 they contrived to get possession of a sum of money, 

 and afterward; they either made off with their booty, 

 or tired out the p-i'.itnce of their pupils by intoler- 

 ably tedious, painful, expensive, and ruinous processes 

 It was against these men that Erasmus directed his 

 well known satire, entitled The Alcltyiiiist. The 

 tricks of these impostors gradually exasperated man- 

 kind against the whole fraternity of the alchymists. 

 Books appeared against them in all quarters, which 

 the art of printing, just invented, enabled the authors 

 to spread with facility : The witsrof the age directed 

 against them the shafts of their ridicule; men of 

 science endeavoured to point out the impossibility, or 

 at least the infinite difficulty, of the art ; men of learn- 

 ing rendered it probable that it never had been under- 

 stood ; and men in authority endeavoured, by laws 

 and by punishments, to save their subjects from the 

 talons of impostors. 



The chemists, of whom we have hitherto spoken, 

 confined their researches chiefly to the metals and to 

 the method of making gold ; throwing out, however, 

 occasional hints of the importance of their art in me- 

 Bail Va- dicinc. But the first man who formally applied che- 

 icatme. mistry to medicine was Basil Valentine. He is said 

 to have been born in l.'iili, and to have been a Bene- 

 dictine monk at Erford, in Germany. He wrote 



various treatises on chemistry, in all of which he ap- 

 plies it to medicine. The most important and fa- 

 mous of them, is his Ctirrns triumphalif Atitimoiiii, in 



which he celebrates the virtues of antimonial medicines, 

 of which he had been the original discoverer. He 

 first taught the doctrine, that all substances are com- 

 posed of salt, s/iljiltur, and mercury, which makes so 

 prominent a figure in the writings of some of his sue-' 

 cessors. 



Chemists had for ages hinted at the importance of 

 discovering a universal remedy, which should be ca- 

 pable of curing, and even of preventing, all diseases; 

 and several of them had asserted, that this remedy 

 was to be found in the philosophers' stone ; which 

 not only converted base metals into gold, but possess- 

 ed also the most sovereign virtue, and was capable 

 of curing all diseases in an instant, and even of pro- 

 longing life to an indefinite length, and of conferring 

 upon the adepts the gift of immortality upon this 

 rarth. This notion gradually gained ground, and 

 the word c/iemislry, in consequence, at length acqui- 

 red a mure extensive signification, and implied not 

 only the art a/' making gold, but the art also of pre- 

 paring Hie universal medicine. Just about the time 

 that the first of these branches was sinking into dis- 

 credit, the second, and with it the study of chemistry, 

 acquired an unparalleled degree of celebrity, and at- 

 tracted the attention of all Europe. This was owing 

 to the appearance of that very extraordinary man 

 Theophrattue Paracelsus, 



He was born in 1493, near Zurich, in Switzerland. 

 Hi> father, who wai a n rdical practition- 

 ed him in physic and surgery. Conceivi, 

 foralchymy, IH wat. put under the care of Triih'-mius, 

 abbot of Spaiiheim, and afterwards of Sigismund 

 Fuggi-rus, from whom he acquired the practical part 

 cit tiie art. Afterwards he visited all the u; 

 ties of Germany, Italy, France, and Spain, and tra- 

 velled through almost every country in Europe; con- 

 sulting indifierrntly, physicians, barbers, old women, 

 coi.jnrers, and chemists. At the age of 20 he was 

 taken prisoner by the Tartan,, and carried before the 

 C/.ar of Russia, whose son he accompanied in an em- 

 bas.'-y to Constantinople ; where, as he tells us, he 

 was hr^t let into the secret of the philosophers' stone. 

 He now applied himself to the practice of medicine 

 with so much success, that he acquired, in conse- 

 quence, a very great reputation. The venereal disease 

 had, a little before, made its appearance in Italy, and 

 was now carrying its ravages over Europe, and baf- 

 fling the feeble attempts of the regular physicians of 

 the times. Paracelsus, previously instructed by Car- 

 pus of Boulognia in the method of treating it by 

 means of mercury, cured that formidable disease 

 wherever it presented itself, with comparative ease, 

 and with the most unbounded applause. Opium, too, 

 which he employed with freedom, enabled him to 

 cine, or at least to palliate, many painful disorders. 



In the 34th year of his age, when his reputation 

 was at its height, he was appointed by the magistrates 

 of Basle to deliver lectures in their town, and thus was 

 the first public professor of chemistry in Europe ; 

 for before that time, the science was not taught in 

 any university. In two years he quarrelled with tle 

 magistrates about a medical fee, and left the city. 

 He rambled up and down the country, his disciples 

 gradually forsook him, he sunk into the deepest dis- 

 sipation, being scarcely ever sober, and never chan- 

 ging his clothes, not even during the night. At last, 

 in the month of September 15H, he died at Salzburg, 

 afier a few days illness, in the 47th year of his age. 

 Though he boasted all his life long that he was in 

 possession of the universal medicine, which he called 

 elixir projirietatis, by which he could not only cure 

 all disorders, but prolong his own life to an indefinite 

 length, and he actually talked of living to the age of 

 Methuselah. 



It is not necessary to draw any character of this 

 extraordinary man. That he was an impostor, and 

 boasted of secrets which he did not know, cannot be 

 denied ; that he stole many opinions, and even facts, 

 from others, is equally true; his arrogance was insup- 

 portable, bin bombast ridiculous, and his whole life a 

 continued tissue of blunders and vice. At the same 

 time, it must be acknowledged that his talents were 

 great, and that his labours were not entirely useless. 

 He contributed not a little to dethrone Galen and 

 Aviccnna, who at that time ruled over medicine with 

 absolute power, and to reinstate Hippocrates on that 

 chair from which he ought never to have risen. He 

 certainly gave chemistry an eclat which it did not be- 

 fore possess ; and this must have induced many of 

 those laborious men who succeeded him to turn their 

 attention to the science. Nor ought we to forget, 

 that, by carrying bit speculation! concerning the phi- 



TJT. 

 l'ar*clut. 



