se: what is
true and living, that the fire cannot burn." With abundant confidence in
his own capacity he proclaimed himself the legitimate monarch, the very
Christ of medicine. "You shall follow me," cried he, "you, Avicenna,
Galen, Rhasis, Montagnana, Mesues; you, Gentlemen of Paris, Montpellier,
Germany, Cologne, Vienna, and whomsoever the Rhine and Danube nourish;
you who inhabit the isles of the sea; you, likewise, Dalmatians,
Athenians; thou, Arab; thou, Greek; thou, Jew; all shall follow me, and
the monarchy shall be mine."(12)

(10) And men have oft grown old among their books
To die case hardened in their ignorance.

--Paracelsus, Browning.

(11) Anna M. Stoddart: Life of Paracelsus, London, 1911, pp.
95-96.

(12) Browning's Paracelsus, London, 1835, p. 206 (note).

This first great revolt against the slavish authority of the schools had
little immediate effect, largely on account of the personal vagaries of
the reformer--but it made men think. Paracelsus stirred the pool as had
not been done for fifteen centuries.

Much more important is the relation of Paracelsus to the new chemical
studies, and their relation to practical medicine. Alchemy, he held, "is
to make neither gold nor silver: its use is to make the supreme
sciences and to direct them against disease." He recognized three
basic substances, sulphur, mercury and salt, which were the necessary
ingredients of all bodies organic or inorganic. They were the basis of
the three principles out of which the Archaeus, the spirit of nature,
formed all bodies. He made important discoveries in chemistry; zinc, the
various compounds of mercury, calomel, flowers of sulphur, among others,
and he was a strong advocate of the use of preparations of iron and
antimony. In practical pharmacy he has perhaps had a greater reputation
for the introduction of a tincture of opium--labdanum or laudanum--with
which he effected miraculous cures, and the use of which he had probably
learned in the East.

Through Paracelsus a great stimulus was given to the study of chemistry
and pharmacy, and he is the first of the modern iatro-chemists. In
contradistinction to Galenic medicines, which were largely derived
from the vegetable kingdom, from this time on we find in the literature
references to spagyric medicines and a "spagyrist" was a Paracelsian who
regarded chemistry as the basis of all medical knowledge.

One cannot speak very warmly of t