v] of Chemical Physiology. 123 



were not unacquainted ; but as a rule the share which it had in 

 the guidance of their thoughts was a small one. To Borelli, 

 the spirit of inquiry as yet reigning in chemistry was so 

 different from that of the school of Galileo that though some 

 passages in his writings shew an insight into what chemistry 

 might ultimately accomplish, most of the chemical explanations 

 of physiological phenomena so far put forward were treated by 

 him with contempt. He saw his way clear so long as he was 

 dealing with the size and shape of particles, and was loth to 

 leave these for unmeasurable and occult qualities. Malpighi 

 seems to have been in his younger days much drawn towards 

 chemical studies, but the more exact results of microscopical 

 inquiry soon carried him too far away from them. Stensen 

 more than any of the men whom we have mentioned in the 

 preceding lectures recognized the part which chemistry might 

 in the future play in the progress of physiology, but he did not 

 of himself contribute to the advance of the infant science. 

 Chemical physiology had an origin of its own and for a long 

 time advanced on a line of its own, separate from or even 

 antagonistic to other branches of physiology. To this we must 

 now turn. 



At the close of the fifteenth century, in the year 1493, 

 according to some 1490, twenty years or more before 

 the birth of Vesalius, there was born at the little town 

 Maria Einsiedeln near the Lake of Zug, in the Canton of 

 Schwyz, in Switzerland (whither to quite a late period 

 pilgrimages were made), one who, under the name of Paracelsus, 

 achieved a reputation more widely recognized in succeeding 

 times than that of any of the names which I have hitherto 

 mentioned, that perhaps of Harvey alone excepted. 



His real name was Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim ; 

 to this others have added the words Philippus Aureolus; but 

 he always called himself Theophrastus von Hohenheim. His 

 father Wilhelm von Hohenheim was a physician at Einsiedeln, 

 and his mother had a position in the hospital there ; scandal 

 alleges that he was the natural son of a person of high degree. 

 The name Paracelsus is supposed by some to be a punning 

 translation of Hohenheim ; others maintain that he himself 



