THE LIFE OF PARACELSUS 5 



was, according to a certain aureum vellus (printed at 

 Rorschach, 1 598), a certain Solomon Trismosinus (or 

 Pfeififer), a countryman of Paracelsus. It is said that 

 this Trismosinus was also in possession of the Universal 

 Panacea ; and it is asserted that he had been seen, still 

 alive, by a French traveller, at the end of the seven- 

 teenth century. 



Paracelsus travelled through the countries along the 

 Danube, and came to Italy, where he served as an army 

 surgeon in the Imperial army, and participated in many 

 of the warlike expeditions of these times. On these 

 occasions he collected a great deal of useful information, 

 not only from physicians, surgeons, and alchemists, but 

 also by his intercourse with executioners, barbers, shep- 

 herds, Jews, gipsies, midwives, and fortune-tellers. He 

 collected useful information from the high and the low, 

 from the learned and from the vulgar, and it was nothing 

 unusual to see him in the company of teamsters and 

 vagabonds, on the highways and at public inns — a circum- 

 stance on account of which his narrow-minded enemies 

 heaped upon him bitter reproach and vilifications. Hav- 

 ing travelled for ten years — sometimes exercising his 

 art as a physician, at other times teaching or studying 

 alchemy and magic,^ according to the custom of those 

 days — he returned at the age of thirty-two again to 

 Germany, where he soon became very celebrated on 

 account of the many and wonderful cures which he 

 performed. 



In the year 1 5 2 5 Paracelsus went to Basel ; and in 

 1527, on the recommendation of Oxcolampadius, he 

 was appointed by the City Council a professor of physic, 

 medicine, and surgery, receiving a considerable salary. 

 His lectures were not — like those of his colleagues — 

 mere repetitions of the opinions of Galen, Hippocrates, 

 and Avicenna, the exposition of which formed the sole 

 occupation of the professors of medicine of those times. 



^ Conrad Gesner, " Epist. Medic," lib. i. fol. i. 



