126 Van Helmont and the Rise [lect. 



and retirement. A certain antagonism arose between this 

 nascent science of chemistry and that older biological learning 

 which formed the basis of medical education. The latter was 

 the heritage of a long-established, powerful profession; the 

 former was the product of amateurs, of the efforts of scattered 

 independent workers, and as such was despised by professional 

 men. 



We know little as to the extent to which Paracelsus carried 

 out his strictly medical, his anatomical and other studies ; but 

 it is clear that whether he learnt much or little the knowledge 

 which he thus gained was, even in view of medical practice, of 

 little account in his mind compared with the new chemical 

 science of which the doctors knew so little. He prized the 

 knowledge which had come to him through the alchemical 

 teaching of Trithemius, in the mines of Tyrol and in his 

 subsequent wanderings as of more value than anything which 

 he could learn from the expositors of Galen. Hence when after 

 some years of travel, in which he is said to have wandered away 

 in the East as far as Samarcand, ever seeking it would appear 

 new chemical knowledge, he settled in 1527 as a physician 

 at Basel, it was not to be wondered that he came into conflict 

 with his orthodox brethren. 



He may have been the turbulent, disorderly, noisy com- 

 bative fellow that he is represented to be : often deep in his 

 cups, and always, whether drunk or sober, ready to shout aloud 

 that his opponent was an ignorant fool and idiot, and that he 

 alone held the keys of truth. Even if he had not been this, if 

 he had been quiet, modest, and shrinking, he had laid hold of 

 something which the ordinary doctors of his time ignored and 

 despised, the beginning of that chemical knowledge which in 

 later years was to become one of the foundations of their science, 

 and the mainstay of their art. And this was enough to put him 

 in antagonism with them. 



Driven away from Basel by their united opposition, he 

 wandered forth from place to place carrying with him his 

 scholars, his chemical apparatus, and his turbulent preaching 

 of his new doctrines. Now rising on the flood of success, with 

 what seemed the no less than marvellous cure of some sick 



