CHEMISTRY AXD ALCHE.Ui: 191 



* 



Hippocrates, and who, by his incessant experiments, made many additions to 

 t lie arts ; upon the other, the theosophist we may even say, the impostor 

 who protended that he was one of thdse privileged beings who receive their 

 knowledge direct from God by mere Divine emanation. This deifying of the 

 illustrious savant contributed to the success of his doctrines ; but he ought, in 

 his own interests, to have held more aloof from men, and lived in a sort of 

 mysterious solitude (Fig. 137). After an adventurous career as a youth, 

 Paracelsus had acquired, at the age of thirty-two, an immense reputation, 

 and his pupils at the University of Bale, where he filled the chair of 





PARACEL^ 



Fig. 137. The Alchemist Paracelsus. After an Engraving by Vriese. 



medicine, were to be counted by the thousand. The enthusiasm was so great 

 that princes and nobles swelled his cortege, and the people kissed the skirts 

 of his robes and the buckles of his shoes. He had cured eighteen notable 

 personages who were believed to be suffering from incurable diseases, and 

 there was a regular scramble to obtain the elixir supposed to insure indefinite 

 prolongation of human life. 



Paracelsus, having probably promised more than he was able to perform, 

 became so unpopular that he was obliged to leave Bale, and, accompanied by 

 a few faithful followers, to resume his wanderings, the result being that he 

 died in misery in a hospital. Before his time, Henry Cornelius Agrippa of 



