112 DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY 



illustrious countryman, Roger Bacon, shone out at 

 the obscurest moment, like an early star predict- 

 ing dawn. It was not, however, till the sixteenth 

 century that the light of nature began to break 

 forth with a regular and progressive increase. The 

 vaunts of Paracelsus of the power of his chemical 

 remedies and elixirs, and his open condemnation of 

 the ancient pharmacy, backed as they were by many 

 surprising cures, convinced all rational physicians 

 that chemistry could furnish many excellent reme- 

 dies, unknown till that time*, and a number of 

 valuable experiments began to be made by phy- 

 sicians and chemists, desirous of discovering and 

 describing new chemical remedies. The chemical 

 and metallurgic arts, exercised by persons empi- 

 rically acquainted with their secrets, began to be 

 seriously studied with a view to the acquisition of 

 rational and useful knowledge, and regular trea- 

 tises on branches of natural science at length to 

 appear. George Agricola, in particular, devoted 

 himself with ardour to the study of mineralogy 

 and metallurgy in the mining districts of Bohemia 

 and Schemnitz, and published copious and metho- 

 dical accounts of all the facts within his knowledge: 

 and our countryman, Dr. Gilbert of Colchester, in 



* Paracelsus performed most of these cures by mercury and 

 opium, the use of which latter drug he had learned in Turkey 

 O f mercurial preparations the physicians of his time were igno- 

 rant, and of opium they were afraid, as being " cold in the fourth 

 degree." Tartar was likewise a great favourite of Paracelsus, 

 who imposed on it that name, " because it contains the water, 

 the salt, the oil, and the acid, which burn the patient as hell 

 does :*' in. short, a kind of counterbalance to his opium. 



