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factors in the universe. Early in the sixteenth century (1505) one who 

 indirectly exerted a great influence on science, and left his mark on the 

 progress of human thought, took his degree of Doctor of Philosophy, to 

 wit, Martin Luther. The psychologist may find much to interest him, 

 the politician may find something to explain, in the stay of Luther in the 

 old Castle of the Wartburg, where ink rather than blood — as in Holy- 

 rood — serves to mark an episode of world-wide interest. Impulses, 

 therefore, of far-reaching import proceeded from Erfurt which are still 

 exerting their influence on physiology and on human progress. In the 

 first half of the sixteenth century, we come across one picturesque and 

 erratic figure, one who in his time played many parts and who took up 

 this idea of an ar chants, to wit, PARACELSUS (b. Einsiedel, 1493) 

 — "Monarch of all Physicians," "King of Quacks." With aliases 

 galore, he flitted hither and thither, and at last died in the Hospital 

 of St. Sebastian, Salzburg, in 1541— about the time Vesalius was 

 finishing his great Fabrica — let. 48 — he who " had compounded the 

 tincture of life." The story of chemical physiology therefore begins 

 with the alchemists, and a curious erratic story it is, which in part 

 only can be told here. Necessarily it is linked with the progress 

 of discovery in other departments. This old archceus takes one 

 back to a memorable Sunday evening in Edinburgh in 1868, when 

 THOS. H. HUXLEY delivered his famous address " on the physical 

 basis of life." Some who listened to that address may recollect the 

 storm it evoked. Let the dead bury their dead. Here is Huxley's 

 view of this archceus, and right catholic it is : — 



" I ask you what is the difference between the conception of life as the product 

 of a certain disposition of material molecules, and the old notion of an archceus govern- 

 ing and directing blind matter within each living body, except this — that here, as 

 elsewhere, matter and law have devoured spirit and spontaneity 1 And, as surely as 

 every future grows out of past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually 

 extend the realm of matter and law, until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feelin?, 

 and with action." 



One of the quaint books not unfrequently to be found on 

 second-hand bookstalls is the Medicina Statica, being the Aphorisms 

 of SANCTORIUS (1561-1636) translated by John Quincy, M.D., to 

 which is added JAMES KEIL'S Medicina Statica Britannica. The 

 motto explains the whole : Ponder e, Mensurd et Numero Deus omnia 

 fecit, mdccxx. His Medical Statics, published at Venice in 1614, deals 

 with the following subjects, and under each section are many 

 aphorisms — insensible perspiration ; air and water ; meats and drink ; 

 sleep and watching ; exercise and rest ; venery ; affections of the 

 mind. JAMES KEIL of Northampton gives another series of 

 aphorisms. Both works afford much amusing reading. Keil was a 

 Scotsman (1673-1719), who lectured at Oxford and Cambridge, 

 published a work on anatomy, and wrote on animal secretion, the 



