1 88 
Paracelsus. 
[April, 
the other extreme of disregarding them altogether. 
“ Reading,” he said, “ never made a physician. Countries 
are the leaves of Nature’s code of laws ; patients his only 
books.” He even states that at one time he did not open a 
book for ten years. Instead, therefore, of pursuing a regu- 
lar course of study, he led the life of a vagrant scholar, 
roaming through Prussia, Poland, Transylvania, Bohemia, 
Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and even extending his travels as 
far as Constantinople and Tartary, in search, it is said, of 
the tinCture of Hermes Trismegistus, better known as the 
Elixir of Life or Universal Medicine. He sought new and 
strange information in the most obscure quarters, conversing 
not only with learned men, but with old women, peasants, 
and conjurors, picking up stray fragments of fa Ct and fable, 
and welding the whole into a system by that innate origina- 
tive power which he believed himself to possess in an excep- 
tional degree. He learnt the remedies by which the beldames 
cured their aches and pains ; listened to the wondrous tales 
of magicians, endeavouring to extract their hidden truth ; 
descended mines and examined the ores ; and experimented 
with various chemicals upon human patients, and — pace our 
Anti-ViviseCtionists — probably upon animals. Besides much 
dross, he managed to gather some very pure gold. He was 
the first who introduced mercury into the pharmacopoeia, or 
at least the first who proved its efficacy on any extensive 
scale. The remarkable cures which he accomplished gave 
rise to a popular belief, apparently countenanced by himself, 
that he was in possession of a medicine which materially 
prolonged the normal life of man, though the power of con- 
ferring aCtual immortality was not attributed to the Elixir 
Vitae till a later period. His correspondence with Erasmus 
shows the estimation in which his talents were held by that 
distinguished scholar, and in 1526 his fame won him a 
recommendation from the learned Oecolampadius to the 
chair of Physic and Surgery at Basel. But for this post he 
was unfitted by temperament and education. His disposition 
was haughty and impatient, and his disdain of views then 
regarded as established rested for the most part not on 
sound inductions, but on the inspirations of an enthusiastic 
genius which could not be expounded in any lucid form. 
The commencement of his course of lectures is character- 
istic of the man. Setting fire to some sulphur in a brazen 
chafing-dish, he threw into the flames the treatises of Galen 
and Avicenna, exclaiming “ Sic vos ardebitis in gehennd .” 
He further went on to state that all universities were less 
gifted than the mere hairs of his own head, and that none 
