Paracelsus Bombastes von Hohenheim, was born in 1493, at Einsiedeln, near Zurich in Switzerland. His father, Wilhelm Bombast von Hohenheim, who practised medicine at Einsiedeln, in Carinthia, and elsewhere, was cousin to George Bombast von Hohenheim, grand-master of the knights of Malta, a circumstance which proves the family to have been noble. Young Paracelsus having gained the rudiments of education at home, became one of the "poor scholars" very common at that period. As such he roamed about from college to college and from convent to convent in quest of knowledge, making everywhere the best use of his time and opportunities. Amongst his masters, Abbot Tritheimius of Spanheim holds the first place. He declares that he visited the chief universities of Italy, France, and Germany, and graduated as doctor of medicine, but when and where this took place is not clearly known.—(See his "Chirurgia Magna.") We next find him serving as a military surgeon in the armies of several princes, and in this capacity traversing Italy, Belgium, Holland, and Denmark. He was next employed by the wealthy Sigismund Fugger of Augsburg to effect the transmutation of metals. At this task he laboured with his usual energy and perseverance until convinced of its fruitlessness. He may, in fact, be said to have decomposed alchemy. The gold-makers of later days were mere conscious impostors, without any claim to scientific merit. Paracelsus next travelled over Europe, from Portugal to Sweden, and from England to Transylvania. On these journeys he not only visited the universities and conversed with the learned, but carefully inspected mines, smelting works, and all kinds of manufactures. He was perhaps the earliest philosopher who saw that facts of great scientific importance might be elicited in the workshop. He even associated with the gipsies to learn their medical secrets. Whilst in Poland he was carried a prisoner into Tartary, where he visited the colleges of Samarkand, then a famed seat of learning. Here he attracted honourable notice, for we find that he was appointed to accompany the son of the khan on a special embassy to Constantinople. He also travelled in Egypt. The exact order and duration of all these journeys and adventures cannot be given; but in 1526 he returned to his native country, in the double character of a scientific reformer and a wonder-working physician. His daring speeches, and the astonishing cures which he performed, excited quite a commotion. Eighteen princes—amongst others Philip, markgraf of Baden—who had been deemed incurable by the Galenist physicians of the day, recovered under his care. In 1526 he was appointed to the double chair of medicine and chemistry at the university of Basle, being thus the earliest teacher of the latter science on record. He began his course of lectures by publicly burning the works of Galen, Avicenna, Averroes, and Aristotle, to the amazement and horror of the public. He excited further astonishment by lecturing, not according to the fashion of the age, in Latin, but in German. For a time his teachings were received with the utmost enthusiasm. But his own misconduct brought on a change. His daring energy and self-confidence gradually degenerated into arrogance and boasting. Although up to his twenty-fifth year he had restricted himself to bread and water, he now became given to drunkenness, and rarely appeared sober either in his class-room or when visiting the sick. In consequence he ceased to be successful; the enthusiasm of his students and of his patients declined; and his many enemies seized the opportunity to come forward. An accident led to his overthrow. A certain canon of the cathedral, tormented with the gout, consulted Paracelsus, offering him one hundred florins for a cure. The cure was effected, but the canon in health repented of the promise he had made when in pain, and refused to pay. Paracelsus applied to the magistrates of Basle, and they with a sagacity which Dogberry might envy, ruled that the canon should pay merely the value of the medicines he had taken! This is the earliest legal decision extant in favour of the "drenching system." Paracelsus, indignant at the decision, denounced the court in a strain of fervid eloquence, threw up his professorship, and quitted Basle in disgust. Well for him that he did: there were many who longed to roast him in the market-place by way of "encouragement" to all innovating thinkers. He now recommenced his wandering life, escorted by a few disciples to whom his conversation—a strange medley of vulgarity and obscurity lit up with meteor-flashes of genius—had become a necessity. In 1528 we find him at Colmar; in 1531 at St. Gallen; in 1536 at Augsburg; afterwards at Kromar in Moravia, at Vienna, and in 1538 at Villach, where appeared his work, "De Natura Rerum." All this time he was gradually sinking deeper into debauchery, falling from his former high ideal and losing his skill and reputation. But the end of his stormy life was near at hand. Worn out with hardships and with thought, he retired to the hospital of St. Sebastian at Saltzburg, and there he died on 24th September, 1541. The prince-bishop of Saltzburg erected a monument to his memory, with a highly laudatory inscription. His character has been very variously estimated. The obstructives of his own age and many hasty judges since have pronounced him a quack. This is simply ridiculous. Your quack dies rich and "respectable," and in four centuries is utterly forgotten. In spite of his admitted tendency to paradox and exaggeration, in spite of his fantastic dreams, he was a man of gigantic intellect, and did the world good service. His protest against authority, fierce and reckless as it seems, was suited to the time and the case. Nor was his hatred of antiquity blind and indiscriminating, for this idol-burner called on the physicians of his time to sit humbly at the feet of Hippocrates. Though he belongs still, as was natural, to the personifying supernatural phase, he says:—"What is now deemed mysterious and supernatural will in time to come be found to spring from natural causes." In opposition to the commentating spirit of the schoolmen, he declared that truth must be sought in nature, not in books. As a chemist, he is considered to have been the discoverer of zinc, and perhaps of bismuth. He was acquainted with hydrogen, muriatic, and sulphurous gases. He distinguished alum from the vitriols; remarking that the former contained an earth, and the latter metals. He perceived the part played by the atmosphere in combustion, and recognized the analogy between combustion and respiration. He saw that in the organic system chemical processes are constantly going on. Thus, to him is due the fundamental idea from which have sprung the chemico-physiological researches of Liebig, Mulder, Boussingault, and others. By using in medicine, not crude vegetables, but their active principles, he opened the way to the discovery of the proximate principles of vegetables, organic alkalis, and the like. But perhaps the greatest service he rendered to chemistry was by declaring it an essential part of medical education, and by showing that its true practical application lay not in gold-making, but in pharmacy and the industrial arts. In medicine he scouted the fearfully complex electuaries and mixtures of the Galenists and the Arabian polypharmacists, recommending simpler and more active preparations. He showed that the idea of poison is merely relative, and knew that poisons in suitable doses may be employed in medicine. He prescribed tin as a remedy for intestinal worms, mercury as an anti-syphilitic, and lead in the diseases of the skin. He also used preparations of antimony, arsenic, and iron. He employed sulphuric acid in the treatment of saturnine affections. The astonishing cures which he undoubtedly performed were, however, due not so much to his peculiar medicines, as to his eminent sagacity and insight. He showed the importance of a chemical examination of urine for the diagnosis of disease. He has sometimes been compared to Luther, with whom, however, he had little sympathy. "Had I time," he said, "to meddle with such matters, I would send both the pope and the reformers to school!" Had his self-control and prudence been at all equal to his intellect, he would have been hailed as the father of modern science. But ambition, vanity, and self-love misled him. He wished not merely to plan, but to complete the reform of philosophy. He sought not to teach, but to thunder-strike and dazzle, and hence his career is a failure—splendid truly, yet not the less mournful. His works have been published in ten folio volumes, Basle, 1589. The text is grossly corrupt, and much foolish matter has been interpolated. The student will do well to employ the Paracelsian Dictionary of Dornæus.—J. W. S.
PARADIES or PARADISI, Pietro Domenico, was born at Naples early in the eighteenth century, and he was still living in 1792 at Venice. He was a pupil of Porpora, acquired some renown as a composer, and still more as a harpsichord player. He began to produce dramatic works at Venice in 1738; and he came to London to compose for the king's theatre in 1746, where his opera of "Factone" was performed in the ensuing January. He remained in England several years, where his playing, ill appreciated in his own country, was greatly admired. He wrote here the twelve sonatas for the harpsichord by which only his name is now known, and which are admirable specimens of the instrumental music of the time.—G. A. M.
