NA TURE 



473 



THURSDAY, FEBRUARY S, 1912. 



FARACELSVS. 



The Life of Paracelsus: Theophrastus von Hohen- 

 heim, 1493-1541. By Anna M. Stoddart. Pp. xv + 



309. (London : John Murray, 191 1.) Price ids. 6d. 



net. 



A PATHETIC interest attaches to this work. It 

 '^*- is the last literary production of a gifted woman 

 who had endeared herself to a large circle of friends 

 by the sterling integrity of her character, By her 

 remarkable intellectual power, her breadth of culture, 

 and by her many-sided activities, especially in the 

 educational world. The work itself represents the 

 thought and labour of years, but the author died before 

 it was given to the world, dying indeed a few hours 

 after passing the last sheets for press. Twenty years 

 ago Miss Anna Stoddart determined to devote her 

 literary ability and her considerable linguistic attain- 

 ments to what she came to regard as a sacred and 

 imperative duty, namely, to rescue from contemptuous 

 oblivion the memory of one whom the great majority 

 of his fellows held to be an extravagant and pre- 

 tentious charlatan — a bibulous braggart, uneducated, 

 quarrelsome, self-assertive, and disreputable — and, 

 while thus restoring his fair fame, place him in his 

 true relation to the great moral and intellectual move- 

 ment of the European Renascence. 



Miss Stoddart is perfectly frank with her readers. 

 She makes no secret of the fact that her interest in her 

 subject had its sole origin in her connection with the 

 Browning Society. Probably, like hundreds of the 

 poet's readers, until Browning's poem quickened her 

 curiosity, she had never heard even of the name of 

 the alchemist, much less of the story of his life. The 

 poet has admitted that his " Paracelsus," written 

 at the age of twenty-one, was regarded by him simply 

 as " the dramatic revelation of the soul of an imaginary 

 person." Miss Stoddart tells us that many readers 

 and admirers of the poem looked upon it in The same 

 light: thev "classed it with others which owed their 

 emergence from subjective chaos to the poet's creative 

 power." Browning, it is true, had equipped himself 

 for his task by reading some of the writings of 

 Paracelsus, together with a few biographical notes — 

 mostly mendacious calumnies, according to Miss Stod- 

 dart. But, she adds, the "astonishing fact is that 

 through this paucity of evidence and this cloud of 

 hostile obscuration the poet discerned his greatness." 



In grappling with such a subject as Paracelsus, the 

 tentative work of the Browning Society, of the com- 

 mittee of which Miss Stoddart was a member for some 

 years, proved unsatisfactory, and accordingly she 

 sought by her own efforts to substantiate and amplify 

 by historical research that which the creative power 

 of the young man of twenty-one had evolved from 

 " subjective chaos." As the result of her labours, Mis< 

 Stoddart has succeeded in producing a book of gn.ii 

 interest, and of much literary charm, but whetln 1 

 it will bear the cold, impartial scrutiny of historians 

 or altogether satisfy the sober lovers of truth may be 

 doubted. To write unstinted eulogy is not necessarily 



NO. 2206, VOL. 88] 



to write sound history, and .in her too evident desire 

 to invest the real Paracelsus with the attributes of 

 the " sympathetic revelation " of the poet, Miss Stoddart 

 has permitted her zeal to outstrip her discretion, and 

 in her passionate eagerness to rehabilitate her hero 

 has given too little exercise to her critical skill. 



The main incidents in the career of Paracelsus are 

 now tolerably well known, and Miss Stoddart does 

 not pretend that her researches have added much to 

 our knowledge of the authentic facts of his extra- 

 ordinary life. She seems to trust implicitly his own 

 account of himself, and accepts unreservedly his ex- 

 planations of much that is admittedly dubious in his 

 character and conduct. His contemporaries, for the 

 most part, declined to accept Theophrastus von Hohen- 

 heim — for such was his real name — at his own valua- 

 tion ; and the historians of chemistry and of medicine 

 have, generally speaking, seen little reason to disturb 

 the general verdict. At the same time, it cannot be 

 doubted that circumstances, not altogether of his 

 choosing, made of Hohenheim a representative man 

 of his age. He was styled, even in his own time, 

 the " Luther of medicine " — a term against which he 

 vehemently protested, but which has nevertheless a 

 certain basis of justification. He was disdainful and 

 contemptuous of authority; he flung himself impetu- 

 ously against the settled convictions and prejudices of 

 the Ztinfigeist of the time, and cventu.ill\ w.i- worsted 

 in the struggle. 



Although unquestionably a forceful character, a man 

 of strong convictions, an iconoclast, reckless and in- 

 temperate in speech, he had no real constructive 

 ability. He railed against the systems of Galen and 

 Hippocrates, but his own attempts at reconstruction 

 ended only in obscurity and vague generalities. As 

 an operative chemist he did little ; no particular dis- 

 covery can with certainty be attributed to him. His 

 life, indeed, was too unsettled, his means too pre- 

 carious, and his wanderings too frequent for him to 

 settle down to the serious pursuit of practical chem- 

 istry. Although his published works, or the many 

 posthumous memoirs — some of thorn issued many 

 years after his death — make nietiimn of various 

 chemical preparations, it is donl)ttul wlirilier these 

 are acluallv to he ascribed to liiin or wlieiher they 

 were not picked up by him in tlie louive of his 

 travels. 



The service that Hohenheim rendered to his age 

 was to unsettle and pull down. He left to others the 

 task of reconstruction. He has been regarded as the 

 first of the latro chemists— the first to declare loudly 

 and unhesitatingly that chemistry had other aims than 

 the transmutation of metals. Her main function, he 

 taught, was to make medicines and not merely gold 

 artificially. Others before him had dimly recognised 

 that alchemy had gradually restricted herself to a 

 single pursuit. Originally her operations were not 

 limited to the artificial production of the noble metals. 

 Ii i. I) Hohenheim's credit that h' i her, in 



^ris .ii .ind out of season, to her ti on. He 



li!,, 1:1(1.1 ]i,i- from the thraldom to uliiili she had 

 j^iadually sul)jccled herself, and in so doinL; gave an 

 extraordinary impetus to the study of t.ition.il tliera- 

 prutics. 



O 



