Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/253

PARACELSUS 235 and shortly afterwards he gave a course of lectures on medicine in the university. Unfortunately for him, the lectures broke away from tradition. They were in German, not in Latin ; they were expositions of his own experience, of his own views, of his own methods of curing, adapted to the diseases that afflicted the Germans in the year 1527, and they were not commentaries on the text of Galen or Avicenna. Unfortunately they attacked, not only these great authorities, but the German graduates who followed them and disputed about them in 1527. They criticized in no measured terms the current medicine of the time, and exposed the practical ignorance, the pomposity, and the greed of those who practised it. The truth of Paracelsus s doctrines was apparently con firmed by his success in curing or mitigating diseases for which the regular physicians could do nothing. For about a couple of years his reputation and practice increased to a surprising extent. But at the end of that time people began to recover themselves. Paracelsus had burst upon the schools with such novel views and methods, with such irresistible criticism, that all opposition was at first crushed flat. Gradually the sea began to rise. His enemies watched for slips and failures ; the physicians maintained that he had no degree, and insisted that he should give proof of his qualifications. His manner of Jife was brought up against him. It was insinuated that he was a profane person, that he was a conjurer, a necro mancer, that, in fact, he was to be got rid of at any cost as a troubler of the peace and of the time-honoured tradi tions of the medical corporations. Moreover, he had a pharmaceutical system of his own which did not harmonize with the commercial arrangements of the apothecaries, and he not only did not use up their drugs like the Galenists, but, in the exercise of his functions as town physician, urged the authorities to keep a sharp eye on the purity of their wares, upon their knowledge of their art, and upon their transactions with their friends the physicians. The growing jealousy and enmity culminated in the Lichtenfels dispute ; and, as the judges sided with the canon, to their everlasting discredit, Paracelsus had no alternative but to tell them his opinion of the whole case and of their notions of justice. So little doubt left he on the subject that his friends j udged it prudent for him to leave Basel at once, as it had been resolved to punish him for the attack on the authorities of which he had been guilty. He departed from Basel in such haste that he carried nothing with him, and some chemical apparatus and other property were taken charge of by Oporinus, his pupil and amanuensis. He went first to Esslingen, where he remained for a brief period, but had soon to leave from absolute want. Then began his wandering life, the course of which can be traced by the dates of his various writings. He thus visited in succession Colmar, Nuremberg, Appenzell, Zurich, Pfaffers, Augsburg, Villach, Meran, Middelheirn, and other places, seldom staying a twelvemonth in any of them. In this way he spent some dozen years, till 1541, when he was invited by Archbishop Ernst to settle at Salzburg, under his protection. After his endless tossing about, this seemed a promise and place of repose. It proved, however, to be the complete and final rest that he found, for after a few months he died on the 24th of September. The cause of his death, like most other details in his history, is uncertain. His enemies asserted that he died in a low tavern in consequence of a drunken debauch of some days duration. Others maintain that he was thrown down a steep place by some emissaries either of the physicians or of the apothecaries, both of whom he had during his life most grievously harassed. In proof of this surgeons have pointed out in Paracelsus s skull a flaw or fracture, which could have been produced only during life. Authorities, however, are not agreed on this point, and it may Le simplest to suspend belief until more evidence is got. He was buried in the churchyard of St Sebastian, but in 1752 his bones were removed to the porch of the church, and a monument of reddish-white marble was erected to his memory. In making the attempt to ascertain what was Paracelsus s charac ter, and what were his philosophical and medical opinions, a very considerable difficulty presents itself at the outset. Of the volu minous writings which pass under his name, what are really his work, and what, if not actually composed by him, express his ideas ? To this question no complete critical reply has as yet been given, though many opinions have been expressed. Dr Marx, for example, will admit only ten treatises as genuine. Dr Haeser allows seventeen for certain, a considerable number some twenty-four as doubtful, and the rest he enumerates eleven as spurious. Dr Mook does not accept these estimates, or the criteria by which the genuineness of a treatise is ascertained. But neither does he give altogether convincing criteria of his own, and, what is still less satisfactory, he does not apply them such as they are to decide the numerous doubtful cases. The only thing Mook has done is to draw up a list of ths different editions of Paracelsus s so-called works. This list is not complete in the enumeration of editions, and it is quite imperfect in bibliographical description, but with these and other serious defects it is the fullest at present extant. The first book by Paracelsus was printed at Augsburg in 1529. It is entitled Practical). Theophrasti Paracclsi, gemacht auff Europen, and forms a small quarto pamphlet of five leaves. Prior to this, in 1526-27, appeared a programme of the lectures he intended to deliver at Basel, but this can hardly be reckoned a specific work. During his lifetime fourteen works and editions were pub lished, and thereafter, between 1542 and 1845, there were at least two hundred and thirty-four separate publications according to Mook s enumeration. The first collected edition was made by Johann Huser in German. It was printed at Basel in 1589-91, in eleven volumes quarto, and is the best of all the editions. Huser did not employ the early printed copies only, but collected all the manuscripts which he could procure, and used them also in forming his text. The only drawback is that rather than omit anything which Paracelsus may have composed, he has gone to the opposite extreme and included writings with which it is pretty certain Paracelsus had nothing to do. The second collected German edition is in four volumes folio, 1603-5. Parallel with it in 1603 the first collected Latin edition was made by Palthenius. It is in eleven volumes quarto, and was completed in 1605. Again, in 1616-18 appeared a reissue of the folio German edition of 1603, and finally in 1658 came the Geneva Latin version, in three volumes folio, edited by Bitiskius. The works were originally composed in Swiss-German, a vigorous speech which Paracelsus wielded with unmistakable power. The Latin versions were made or edited by Adam von Boden stein, Gerard Dorn, Michael Toxites, and Oporinus, about the middle of the 16th century. A few translations into other languages exist, as of the Chirurgia Magna and some other works into French, and of one or two into Dutch, Italian, and even Arabic. The translations into English amount to about a dozen, dating mostly from the middle of the 17th century. The original editions of Paracelsus s works are getting less and less common ; even the English versions are among the rarest of their class. Over and above the numerous editions, there is a bulky literature of an explanatory and controversial character, for which the world is indebted to Paracelsus s followers and enemies. A good deal of it is taken up with a defence of chemical, or, as they were called, "spagyric," medicines against the attacks of the supporters of the Galenic pharmacopoeia. The aim of all Paracelsus s writing is to promote the progress of medicine, and he endeavours to put before physicians a grand ideal of their profession. In his attempts he takes the widest view of medicine. He bases it on the general relationship which man bears to nature as a whole ; he cannot divorce the life of man from that of the universe ; he cannot think of disease otherwise than as a phase of life. He is compelled therefore to rest his medical prac- tice upon general theories of the present state of things ; his medi cal system if there is such a thing is an adaptation of his cos mogony. It is this latter which has been the stumbling-block to many past critics of Paracelsus, and unless its character is remem bered it will be the same to others in the future. Dissatisfied with the Aristotelianism of his time, Paracelsus turned with greater expectation to the Neoplatonism which was reviving. His eager ness to understand the relationship of man to the universe led him to the Kabbala, where these mysteries seemed to be explained, and from these unsubstantial materials he constructed, so far as it can be understood, his visionary philosophy. Interwoven with it, how ever, were the results of his own personal experience and work in natural history and chemical pharmacy and practical medicine,