260 MODERN SCIENCE READER 



olus Philippus Theophrastus, commonly called Paracelsus, 

 were both pupils in chemistry of Trithemius, Abbot of 

 Spannheim, and were held to compete, on equal terms, for 

 the honorable title of Trismegistus redivivus. Eliphas Levi 

 remarked of Paracelsus that he had "divined more than any 

 one without ever completely understanding anything." 1 

 The facts of his life are vaguely known, having been 

 thickly overlaid with embellishing legends. It is, neverthe- 

 less, fairly certain that he was born at Einsiedeln, in 

 Switzerland, in 1493, as the only child of a well-thought-of 

 physician in orthodox practice. His son was of a different 

 stamp. Attracted in boyhood by the phantasmagoria of 

 learning, he studied alchemy in the works of Isaac the Hol- 

 lander, and imbibed from them the doctrine of the ele- 

 mental triad of mercury, sulphur, and salt, which he subse- 

 quently diffused and recommended. 



He entered the University of Basle at the age of sixteen. 

 His studies were desultory, if occasionally intense. But 

 a cap-and-gown life was not for him, he had the "hungry 

 heart" of the born traveler, and in 1516 he set out to 

 tramp the "open road" that has many turnings, but no 

 terminus. Supporting himself as he went along by casting 

 horoscopes, fortune-telling, cheiromancy, and the like, he 

 left no European country unvisited. Not even Russia, 

 whence he was fabled to have reached the court of the Great 

 Cham, and to have attended the son of that shadowy poten- 

 tate on an embassy to Constantinople. There he acquired, 

 if rumor spoke truly, the secret of the "double tincture," 

 capable both of lengthening life and of ennobling metals; 

 and a wandering Arab made him acquainted with the 

 mysterious "alcahest," or universal solvent. He learned 

 also the virtues of laudanum, and soon afterward began to 

 effect cures, the fame of which preceded him as he strolled 

 homeward, and secured for him, in 1526, the chair of 

 physics and surgery in his old university. Professorial 



1 Histoire de la Magie, livre v. ch. 5. Quoted by A. E. Waite, pref- 

 ace to The Hermetic Writings of Paracelsus, 1894. 



