mineral waters, and in hollows in the earth. He gave it the name of "gas sylvestre." He would doubtless have carried his discoveries much farther along if he had possessed the apparatus which is required for such researches. However, despite the lack of these facilities, he was able to describe hydrogen and marsh gas as special varieties which do not possess the same composition as ordinary air. Finally, in his treatise entitled "Pharmacopolium ac dispensatorium modernum" will be found a goodly number of useful instructions as to the proper manner of preparing drugs.
A complete collection of his writings was published at Amsterdam by his son, in 1648, under the title "Ortus medicinae vel opera et opuscula omnia."
Theophrast von Hohenheim—who is known everywhere throughout the world as "Paracelsus"—was the son of Wilhelm Bombast von Hohenheim, a physician who belonged to one of the noble families of the Duchy of Württemberg. He was born in 1493 at a spot called "Das Hohe Nest" (the lofty nest) in the Canton of Schwyz, about one hour's distance from the celebrated monastery or cloister of Einsiedeln, of which institution his father was the official physician. Switzerland, therefore, has a right to claim Paracelsus as one of her sons. In 1502 his father transferred his home to Villach, in Carinthia (to the east of Tyrol), and continued to live there up to the time of his death in 1534. It is not known where the son obtained his degree of Doctor of Medicine. It is a well-established fact, however, that he received the first part of his training as a chemist from Johann Trietheim, the Prior of Sponheim, and his subsequent education in the laboratory of Sigmund Fugger, the cultivated owner of wines at Schwatz in the Tyrol. He traveled all over Europe, going from one university to another and making the acquaintance of people who were well informed in matters relating to natural history, chemistry and metallurgy; and during all this time he appears to have absorbed a great deal of information relating to almost every department of human knowledge. Finally in 1526, soon
