people with whom I associated in my youth I am not of a finely-spun texture. . . . We were not nourished with figs and white bread, but with cheese, milk and black bread-food that does not make delicate lads. . . . They say of me that I lead the people astray, that I am possessed of a devil, that I am a sorcerer, and that I am a magician. Whatever truth there may be in these charges, one thing is certain: You are all of you unworthy to unloose the latchets of my shoes." (From Paragranum, II., 120.)
Oporinus, who acted for a long time as Paracelsus' assistant, made the following statements with regard to some of the methods of his former master:—
He always kept several preparations stewing on his furnace—as,
for example, a sublimate of oil or of arsenic, a mixture of saffron
and iron, or his marvelous Opedeldoch. He never prescribed a
special diet nor any hygienic measures. As a purge he gave a
precipitate of theriaca or of mithridate, or simply the juice of
cherries or grapes, in the form of granules (about the size of the
droppings of mice), and he was careful always to give them in
uneven numbers (1, 3, or 5). He was bitterly opposed to the
polypharmacy which prevailed so widely in his day.
Cabanès says that we probably owe to Paracelsus an
increased knowledge of the virtues possessed by the
different preparations of antimony, mercury and iron, and
by salines. It was he who created the distinction between
officinal and magistral preparations. To our list of
pharmaceutical preparations, he added tincture of hellebore,
compound tincture of aloes, digestive ointment, the
tincture of metals ("Lilium" of Paracelsus), the "Saffron
of Mars," etc. He was the inventor of the precious
preparation known as "la mumie," a preparation which
was popularly believed to possess marvelous healing
powers. Ambroise Paré, toward the end of his career, was
greatly blamed because he did not employ this remedy, and
he was finally compelled in self-defense to write a pamphlet
on the subject. (The text is reprinted in Malgaigne's
"Ambroise Paré," under the title of "Traité de la mumie et de la licorne.")
