Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/252

234 P A R P A R assai referred to is a beverage made by squeezing the black grape-like berries of the assai palm (Euterpe edulis) ; it is largely drunk by all classes in Para. The importance of the city is due to its being the great emporium of the rapidly-developing trade of the Amazons. The trade is carried on by several steamboat companies ; the most im portant, the Amazonian Steamboat Company, receives a subsidy from the Brazilian Government. Two lines of steamers run between Liverpool and Para ; there are also a French line and a German line. A large trade is trans acted with the United States, but mainly through English, French, German, and Portuguese houses. The principal exports are cocoa, Brazil nuts, hides, deer-skins, isinglass, balsam of copaiba, tonka beans, and Peruvian bark. In 1863 the total value of the imports was about 500,000 and of the exports about 525,000 ; by 1882 the duties paid to the custom-house amounted to 864,396. Population has been growing faster than the supply of houses. In 1819 the inhabitants were estimated at 24,500, but by 1850 they had declined to 15,000; in 1866 they were 36,000 (about 5000 slaves) ; and they are now (1884) nearly 40,000. Besides a vast cathedral (1720) and the president s palace, usually considered one of the best buildings of its kind in Brazil, ParA contains an episcopal palace (formerly the Jesuit college), a handsome theatre, a large market building, a custom-house (formerly a convent, with two great towers), naval and military arsenals (the first of some size, with shipbuilding yards and a gridiron), a botanical garden, &c. About a mile from the city is the chapel of Our Lady of Nazareth, the most celebrated shrine in northern Brazil. In 1615 Francisco Caldeira de Castello Branco, sent cmt by the Portuguese at Maranhao, built the fort of Santo Christo and founded the settlement of Xossa Senhora de Belem. By 1641 it was a place of 400 inhabitants, with four monasteries. A premature declaration of independence was made at Para in 1823, and soon after Captain Grenfell, sent by Lord Cochrane, brought the city over to the Brazilian party ; but for many years it was subject to political disturbance. In 1835 " every respectable white was obliged to leave the city" by the anarchical proceedings of the so-called " Liberals " Gomes, Vinagre, and Rodriguez. See Bates, Naturalist on the River Amazons, 1863 ; H. H. Smith, Brazil, 1879. PARACELSUS (c. 1490-1541). It seems now to be established that Paracelsus was born near Einsiedeln, in the canton Schwyz, in 1490 or 1491 according to some, or 1493 according to others. His father, the natural son of a grand master of the Teutonic order, was Wilhelm Bombast von Hohenheim, who had a hard struggle to make a subsistence as a physician. His mother was superintendent of the hospital at Einsiedeln, a post she relinquished upon her marriage. Paracelsus s name was Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim ; for the names Philippus and Aureolus good authority is wanting, and the epithet Paracelsus, like some similar compounds, was probably one of his own making, and was meant to denote his superiority to Celsus. In 1502-3 his father, taking his family with him, removed to Villach in Carinthia; and he resided there in the practice of the medical art till his death in 1534. In one of his works, dedicated to the magistracy of the town, Paracelsus refers to the esteem, in which his father was held, and expresses his own gratitude for it. Of the early years of Paracelsus s life there is hardly anything known. His father was his first teacher, and took pains to instruct him in all the learning of the time, especially in medicine. Doubtless Paracelsus learned rapidly what was put before him, but he seems at a com paratively early age to have questioned the value of what he was expected to acquire, and to have soon struck out ways for himself. As he grew older he was taken in hand by several distinguished churchmen, although it has been objected that dates will not warrant the idea of actual personal instruction. This, however, is not correct, for all the men Paracelsus mentions were alive in his lifetime, though he was so young that he could hardly have profited by their lessons, unless on the supposition that he was a quick and precocious boy, which it is very likely he was. At the age of sixteen he entered the university of Basel, but probably soon abandoned the studies therein pursued. He next went to Trithemius, the bishop of Sponheim and Wiirzburg, under whom he prosecuted chemical researches. Trithemius is the reputed author of some obscure tracts on the great elixir, and as there was no other chemistry going Paracelsus would have to devote himself to the reiterated operations so characteristic of the notions of that time. But the confection of the stone of the philosophers was too remote a possibility to gratify the fiery spirit of a youth like Paracelsus, eager to make what he knew, or could learn, at once available for practical medicine. So he left school chemistry as he had forsaken university culture, and started for the mines in Tyrol owned by the wealthy family of the Fuggers. The sort of knowledge he got there pleased him much more. There at least he was in contact with reality. The struggle with nature before the precious metals could be made of use impressed upon him more and more the importance of actual personal observation. He saw all the mechanical difficulties that had to be overcome in mining ; he learned the nature and succession of rocks, the physical properties of minerals, ores, and metals ; he got a notion of mineral waters; he was an eyewitness of the accidents which befel the miners, and studied the diseases which attacked them ; he had proof that positive knowledge of nature was not to be got in schools and universities, but only by going to Nature herself, and to those who were constantly engaged with her. Hence came Paracelsus s peculiar mode of study. He attached no value to mere scholarship ; scholastic disputations he utterly ignored and despised, and especially the discussions on medical topics, which turned more upon theories and definitions than upon actual practice. He therefore went wandering over a great part of Europe to learn all that he could. In so doing he was one of the first physicians of modern times to profit by a mode of study which is now reckoned indispensable. In the 16th century the difficulty of moving about was much greater than it is now ; still Paracelsus faced it, and on principle. The book of nature, he affirmed, is that which the physician must read, and to do so he must walk over the leaves. The humours and passions and diseases of different nations are different, and the physician must go among the nations if he will be master of his art ; the more he knows of other nations, the better he will under stand his own. For the physician it is ten times more necessary and useful to know the powers of the heavens and the earth, the virtues of plants and minerals, than to spend his time on Greek and Latin grammar. And the com mentary of his own and succeeding centuries upon these very extreme views is that Paracelsus was no scholar, but an ignorant vagabond. He himself, however, valued his method and his knowledge very differently, and argued that he knew what his predecessors were ignorant of, be cause he had been taught in no human school. " Whence have I all my secrets, out of what writers and authors 1 Ask rather how the beasts have learned their arts. If nature can instruct irrational animals, can it not much more men ? " In this new school discovered by Paracelsus, and since attended with the happiest results by many others, he remained for about ten years. He had acquired great stores of facts, which it was impossible for him to have reduced to order, but which gave him an unquestion able superiority to his contemporaries. So in 1526 or 1527, on his return to Basel, he was appointed town physician,