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Updated: May 5, 2025
On December 7 he writes: 'Read 'Paracelsus', a work of great daring, starred with poetry of thought, feeling, and diction, but occasionally obscure; the writer can scarcely fail to be a leading spirit of his time. . . . He invited Mr. Browning to his country house, Elm Place, Elstree, for the last evening of the year; and again refers to him under date of December 31.
Whatever we think of Paracelsus, the chief agent in the introduction of these remedies, and whatever limits we may assign to the use of these long-trusted mineral drugs, there can be no doubt that the chemical school, as it was called, did a great deal towards the expurgation of the old, overloaded, and repulsive pharmacopoeia.
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 the practical medical writings of Paracelsus.
It was curious to see this heavy man, whose seriousness was always problematical, caught up by a curious excitement. 'You've been talking of Paracelsus, he said. 'There is one of his experiments which the doctor has withheld from you. You will find it neither mean nor mercenary, but it is very terrible.
"Parry," I observed, "seems to agree with the view attributed by Browning to Paracelsus, that thought is disease, and natural health is ignorance." "Well," rejoined Ellis, "there is a good deal to be said for that." "There's a good deal to be said for everything," I rejoined.
'They said there that he was attempting to make living creatures by a magical operation. She glanced at the doctor, but spoke to Arthur. 'Just before you came in, our friend was talking of that book of Paracelsus in which he speaks of feeding the monsters he has made on human blood. Arthur gave a horrified cry.
This curious discovery is attributed to Andreas Libavius, professor of medicine and chemistry in the university of Halle, who, in the year 1615, publicly recommended experimental essays to ascertain the fact. Libavius was an honest and spirited opposer of the Theosophic system, founded by the bombastic Paracelsus, and supported by a numerous tribe of credulous and frantic followers.
Paracelsus and Bohmen, Borri and Meyer, with their strange heterogeneous mixture of alchymy and religion, but paved the way for the stranger, and even more extravagant mixture of magnetism and religion, as now practised in Germany.
There seems no doubt that Paracelsus discovered many facts which became of great importance in chemistry: he prepared the inflammable gas we now call hydrogen, by the reaction between iron filings and oil of vitriol; he distinguished metals from substances which had been classed with metals but lacked the essential metalline character of ductility; he made medicinal preparations of mercury, lead and iron, and introduced many new and powerful drugs, notably laudanum.
However clever you young gentlemen may be, old Paracelsus spoke the holy truth: in herbis verbis et lapidibus.... I've retired from practice, you know, of course, but two or three times a week it will happen that I'm brought back to my old work. They come for advice I can't drive them away. Sometimes the poor have recourse to me for help. And indeed there are no doctors here at all.
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