FROM PARACELSUS TO HARVEY 



some very strange lessons. Modesty was not one of 

 these. " Now at this time," he declares, "I, Theo- 

 phrastus Paracelsus, Bombast, Monarch of the Arcana, 

 was endowed by God with special gifts for this end, 

 that every searcher after this supreme philosopher's 

 work may be forced to imitate and to follow me, be 

 he Italian, Pole, Gaul, German, or whatsoever or 

 whosoever he be. Come hither after me, all ye philos- 

 ophers, astronomers, and spagirists. ... I will show 

 and open to you . . . this corporeal regeneration." l 



Paracelsus based his medical teachings on four "pil- 

 lars" philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and virtue of 

 the physician a strange-enough equipment surely, 

 and yet, properly interpreted, not quite so anomalous 

 as it seems at first blush. Philosophy was the "gate 

 of medicine," whereby the physician entered rightly 

 upon the true course of learning; astronomy, the 

 study of the stars, was all-important because "they 

 (the stars) caused disease by their exhalations, as, 

 for instance, the sun by excessive heat"; alchemy, 

 as he interpreted it, meant the improvement of nat- 

 ural substances for man's benefit; while virtue in the 

 physician was necessary since "only the virtuous are 

 permitted to penetrate into the innermost nature of 

 man and the universe." 



All his writings aim to promote progress in medicine, 

 and to hold before the physician a grand ideal of his 

 profession. In this his views are wide and far-reach- 

 ing, based on the relationship which man bears to 

 nature as a whole ; but in his sweeping condemnations 

 he not only rejected Galenic therapeutics and Galenic 

 anatomy, but condemned dissections of any kind. 



