fS4 PARACELSUS 



for life, and not throw, by his unreasonable inter- 

 ference, fresh obstacles in the way of recovery " {Tara- 

 grannm), 



" Medicine is much more an art than a science ; to 

 know the experience of others may be useful to a phy- 

 sician, but all the learning in the world could not make 

 a man a physician, unless he has the necessary talents, 

 and is destined by Nature to be a physician. If we 

 want to learn to know the inner man by studying only 

 the appearance of the exterior man, we will never come 

 to an end, because each man's constitution differs in 

 some respect from that of another. If a physician 

 knows nothing more about his patient than what the 

 latter tells him, he knows very little indeed, because 

 the patient usually knows only that he suffers pain. 

 Nature causes and cures disease, and it is therefore 

 necessary that the physician should know the processes 

 of Nature, the invisible as well as the visible man. He 

 will then be able to recognise the cause and the course 

 of a disease, and he will know much more by using his 

 own reason than by all that the looks or the patient 

 may tell him. Medical science may be acquired by 

 learning, but medical wisdom is given by God " ^ {Para- 

 granum). 



" Natural man has no wisdom, but the wisdom of 

 God may act through him as an instrument. God is 

 greater than Nature, for Nature is His product ; and 

 the beginning of wisdom in man is therefore the be- 

 ginning of his supernatural power. The kind of know- 

 ledge that man ought to possess is not derived from 

 the earth, nor does it come from the stars; but it is 

 derived from the Highest, and therefore the man who 

 possesses the Highest may rule over the things of the 

 earth, and over the stars. There is a great difference 

 between the power that removes the invisible causes of 



^ This mode of reasoning is as applicable to the state of medical science 

 tu-day as it was at the time of Paracelsus. 



