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men and women everywhere saw ghosts, spectres, and wehr- 
wolves ; “ demoniacal possessions ” were among the recognised 
ills to which rich and poor alike were liable ; and jugglers, 
friars, and fanatics wandered through the country, making 
easy capital out of popular credulity.* * * § This state of things, 
dating from a still more distant time, prevailed also through- 
out Europe generally ; nor was it destined yet a while to give 
way before the light of advancing “ knowledge.” 
(b.) The professors of alchemy were the “scientists” of that 
period. Of the so-called science, we read that, “as a system 
or delusion, it beguiled men ; s minds;” that among its 
professors were men of the highest types, most illustrious 
adepts, some of them men of world wide reputation in learn- 
ing as well as in science. We further learn with regard to 
them that “they were patient and assiduous workmen,but blind 
to the uniformities which exist in nature ; ignorant of the laws 
of causation which determined the class of phenomena they 
were engaged in producing;” that therefore they committed 
all their experiments to blind chance, torturing every natural 
object with which they were acquainted, in the hope that 
something good might turn up ; that occasionally they were 
rewarded by the discovery of some new substance with which 
they were not before acquainted ; but that, from beginning to 
end, their “ researches 33 were a work of chance. f 
2. A prominent “ scientist ” of that time was Theophrastus 
Bombastus Yon Hohenheim — more generally known as 
Paracelsus. J It is recorded of him that he laid hold of a 
notion with regard to the nature of life which easily seduces 
the imagination of those who do not ask for rational proof, 
namely, that there is a constant analogy between the macrocosm, 
as they call it, of external nature, and the microcosm of man ; 
that this harmony and parallelism of all things can only be 
made known to us by Divine revelation ;§ and that therefore 
all the heathen philosophy was erroneous. He thought man 
had a sidereal — otherwise immaterial — as well as a material 
body; that the former, for a time at least, survived the latter — 
thus explaining the apparitions of dead persons, in which he 
firmly believed ; that this starry influence was connected with 
each corporeal element ; that to the sidereal salt was assigned 
the material consistence of the body, to the sidereal sulphur 
its growth and animal heat, and to the sidereal mercury the 
* Biographie Universelle, art. “ Paracelse.” 
t Mery on’s Hist, of Med., vol. i. p. 158. 
t Born near Zurich, a.d. 1493. 
§ Mery on’s Hist, of Med., vol. i. pp. 339, 346-351. 
