CAUSES OF DISEASE.

257

for "active principles". An alchemist, or "archeus," resides in the human stomach and presides over digestion, separating the poisonous from the nutritious part of the food, and when a human alchemist has attained similar skill he will be perfect in his art.

The fourth pillar is the Virtue of the physician; for the virtuous only are permitted to penetrate into the innermost nature of man and the universe, a power possessed in great perfection by Paracelsus, but found in very few besides, even among his own pupils, only ten in some hundreds of whom, he says, were at all satisfactory.

Man, according to Paracelsus, is a microcosm—that is, he contains elements representing every part of the universe. "There is nothing in heaven and earth which is not in man, and God, who is in heaven, is also in man.” Diseases are caused and cured by the action of the various constituents of the universe (the macrocosm) on their corresponding parts in man (the microcosm), from which it follows that the physician must take all knowledge as his province, and that medicine is the highest and widest of sciences since it includes them all from theology downwards. Elsewhere he distinguishes five "Beings" (Entia) which are the causes of all diseases, and each of which can produce any disease, there being thus five kinds of jaundice, five kinds of dropsy, and so on. "When a physician, therefore, finds himself in the presence of a paralytic, he must, before all things, discover which Ens' has produced the paralysis." The first four are the "Ens Astrorum," or influence of the stars; the "Ens Veneni," or poison; the "Ens Naturale,” or disturbances arising in the body itself; and the "Ens Spirituale," or spiritual agencies.

The Ens Astrorum has been considered under astronomy, and the Ens Veneni will be discussed when we speak of his doctrine of "tartar," but the spiritual agencies deserve a special notice. These, he declares, have nothing to do with angels or devils, whom he leaves to theologians, but are the spirits of human beings. They are not identical with the soul, "nor is this spirit given from heaven; but

man makes it himself, it is the child of his will".

Children have no spirits, for they have no perfect will. The spirits may leave the body of their possessor with or without his consciousness; they can be seen and felt by other spirits, and can assist or injure one another. A free fight (freyer kampff) may take place between two such spirits, as a result of which, wounds, ulcers and diseases may appear in the bodies of their owners. Paracelsus supports this by what he calls the undoubted fact that witches can imprison the spirits of their enemies in wax figures: also the spirits of a fugitive thief may be forced into a wax figure, and all that is done to it will be felt by the thief. This cannot be done to an honest man for his spirit resists; but a thief's spirit is cowardly, as is shown by his running away. "And think not that this is a joke, ye physicians; ye know not the least part of the power of the will, for she bears spirits quite distinct from the rational spirit."

But after carefully describing and distinguishing these four "Entia," Paracelsus tells us that all this applies only to Turks, Saracens, and other infidels, and has been written mainly to sharpen the reader's "ingenium"; for Christians and Jews there is but one cause of sickness, the “Ens Dei,” or direct action of God, who sends diseases as purgatorial punishments. When the predestined hour of release comes, He either cures the patient directly, or through a physician, most of whom, however, resemble the demons of purgatory, and are sent to increase the torments of the sick.

The immediate causes of disease are changes, not in the four humours, but in the three mystic elements, salt, sulphur, and mercury. "What burns is sulphur, what smokes or sublimes is mercury, the ashes are salt." In health these are so mingled in the body that they cannot be distinguished; when they separate they cause sickness; their complete separation is death. Thus distilled "mercury" produces paralysis, precipitated gout, sublimated mania. Prurigo and scabies are due to a solution, ulcers to a calcination of the "salt". This doctrine is obviously a mere reproduction

ADMIRERS OF PARACELSUS.

of the humoral pathology in a vaguer form.

259

We know

what blood, phlegm and bile are, and may therefore hope to discover their relation to diseases; but the Paracelsic "salt," “sulphur” and “mercury" are mystical terms which may mean anything.

The above is a brief outline of the general medical doctrines of Paracelsus, but his habit of self-contradiction, and of insisting on each separate point as the one thing needful, renders it very difficult to form a consistent idea of his teaching. This also helps to explain the opposing verdicts which have been passed upon him. It would be easy, for instance, by confining ourselves to special passages, to hold up Paracelsus as the benefactor if not the reformer of medicine; but it would be still easier, by quoting his more extravagant theories, to apparently justify the exclamation of an opponent: "Who can take up a treatise by Theophrastus without at once seeing that the man was mad!" His modern admirers belong to two very different classes: German medical historians, in search of some one to rival the fame of Harvey and the great French and Italian surgeons and anatomists; and theosophists anxious to show what benefits have been bestowed on mankind by the great adepts or Mahatmas. They have raised an imposing monument to their hero on somewhat slight foundations. Does Paracelsus abuse Galen and Avicenna? He is "the reformer of medicine!" Does he say that air is contained in water? He is "the immortal discoverer of hydrogen!" Did he call one of his secret nostrums "laudanum"? "He bestowed on mankind the inestimable gift of opium!" The historians indeed admit that if he wrote all the absurdities attributed to him, he cannot be the reformer of medicine, the German Harvey; and they attempt to show that most of his so called works are spurious, and written by crackbrained pupils, or even by his enemies to bring him into ridicule. But it is just these works which excite the admiration of our modern mystics. Paracelsus, say they, in his leisure moments, doubtless reformed medi

cine, discovered hydrogen, and invented laudanum, but it is in what you call absurdities that we recognise the language of the great adept, the friend of the Khan of Tartary, who conversed with esoteric Buddhists on the northern slopes of the Himalaya. Neither the biblio nor biographical question can be considered here, but after a short account of Paracelsus' doctrine on some special points, and particularly on the treatment of disease, we shall attempt to form an impartial estimate of his real position in medical history.

NOTES.

The title Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast von Hohenheim is never employed by himself, and is mostly used by his enemies, who considered such a name in itself a proof of quackery. The only evidence for Philip is his tombstone, where it may be a later addition, and a single letter of doubtful authenticity. He uses the term "Aureolus" when comparing himself with Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, he (Paracelsus) is a very different man, a “golden Theo. phrastus. It is probably one of those euphonious pseudonyms so common in that age. Bombast was part of the family name of the Hohenheims, and, in spite of some scandal to the contrary, Paracelsus seems to have a legitimate claim to it. It has no connection, except through the irony of fate, with the English word for inflated language. Though he doubtless considered himself "superior to Celsus" his usual title is probably intended for a translation of "Von Hohenheim" for his pupil Bodenstein describes him as "e familiâ Paracelsorum ".

For an explanation and refutation of the hydrogen myth see Kopp's treatise on the discovery of the compound nature of water in his Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chemie, Brunswick, 1869-75. The nature of the laudanum is discussed in Ap. vi. Paracelsus' visit to Tartary rests on the evidence of Van Helmont, who connects it with the legend of his mutilation. It seems sufficiently disproved by the fact that Paracelsus makes no mention of it in the two lists he gives of the countries he has visited, while in the De Morbo Tartarico, cap. ii. he distinctly denies that he has ever been in Asia or Africa: "Dass ich Asiam und Aphricam erfahren hab und dieselbigen Blätter umbkert ist nit".

Nearly 300 treatises have been attributed to Paracelsus, of which about 100 are printed in the collected editions, Basel, 1589-90, Strassburg, 1603-16, and Geneva, 1658 (Latin trans.). Of these Haeser considers fifteen, Marx ten, and Rohlfs five or six to be genuine. See Haeser, ii. 83, where may be found a copious list of the "Paracelsus Literature

up to 1870. Since then the chief works on the subject are Mook, Theophrastus Paracelsus, Wurzburg, 1876, severely criticised by Rohlfs, Archiv, 1882; Schubert, Paracelsus Forschungen, Frankfort, 1887; Ferguson, Bibliographia Paracelsica, Glasgow, three parts, 1877-90; Hartmann, Paracelsus, London, 1887 (from an esoteric Buddhist" standpoint).

66

XLVI. PARACELSUS (continued).

ACCORDING to Paracelsus the physicians of his day wasted their time disputing with peasants and laymen, and neglected philosophy," which would have taught them the doctrine of "tartar," and its coagulation by the "spirit of salt," "a far better anatomy than the cutting up of robbers and such like, for the young new-fledged fools when they have seen it all know less than before, and choke themselves in dirt and carcases". All food contains poisonous, as well as nutritious ingredients, and it is the business of the alchemist or Archeus of digestion to separate the two. If he fails to do this, or if the excretory organs are damaged, the poison remains in the body, and there meets with a "spirit of coagulation," which solidifies and causes it to be deposited on the teeth, in the joints, and in various other organs. This deposit Paracelsus calls "tartar," partly because of its resemblance to that found in wine casks, and partly because the pains it causes are like those of Tartarus. Numerous "tartaric diseases" are thus produced, the chief being gout and stone, which are closely allied, and the tendency to which may be inherited. This doctrine of tartar is one of the most highly-praised parts of the Paracelsic system, but though it contains much that is true there is little that is new, as Paracelsus might have learnt had he read his Galen instead of burning him.

Still more excellent is his teaching as to the healing of wounds. Every part of the body, he says, contains a natural "balsam" capable of curing injuries, and nothing more is required than some simple ointment to serve as a nutriment