His Pharmacy.
The composition of Paracelsus’s laudanum, the name of which he no doubt invented, has never been satisfactorily ascertained. Paracelsus himself made a great secret of it, and probably used the term for several medicines. It was generally, at least, a preparation of opium, sometimes opium itself. He is believed to have carried opium in the pommel of his sword, and this he called the “stone of immortality.”
Next to opium he believed in mercury, and was largely influential in popularising this metal and its preparations for the treatment of syphilis. It was principally employed externally before his time. He mocked at “the wooden doctors with their guaiacum decoctions,” and at the “waggon grease with which they smeared their patients.” He used turpith mineral (the yellow sulphate), and alembroth salt (ammonio-chloride), though he did not invent these names, and it is possible that he did not mean by them the same substances as the alchemists did. Operinus states that he always gave precipitated mercury (red precipitate, apparently) as a purgative. He gave it in pills with a little theriaca or cherry juice. This he also appears to have designated laudanum. It is certain that he gave other purgatives besides.
It must be admitted that if Basil Valentine is a mythical character, the reputation of Paracelsus is greatly enhanced. Nowhere does the latter claim to have been the first to introduce antimony into medical practice, but it is certain that it could not have been used to any great extent before his time. If we suppose that the works attributed to Basil Valentine were fictitious, so far, that is, as their authorship is concerned, they were compiled about fifty years after the death of Paracelsus, and at the time when his fame was at its zenith. Many of the allusions to antimony contained in those treatises might have been collected from the traditions of the master’s conversations and writings, much from his immediate disciples, and the whole skilfully blended by a literary artist.
Paracelsus praises highly his magistery of antimony, the essence, the arcanum, the virtue of antimony. Of this, he says, you will find no account in your books of medicine. This is how to prepare it. Take care at the outset that nothing corrupts the antimony; but keep it entire without any change of form. For under this form the arcanum lies concealed. No deadhead must remain, but it must be reduced by a third cohobation into a third nature. Then the arcanum is yielded. Dose, 4 grains taken with quintessence of melissa.
His “Lilium,” or tinctura metallorum, given as an alterative and for many complaints, was formulated in a very elaborate way by his disciples, but simplified it consisted of antimony, 4, tin 1, copper 1, melted together in a crucible, the alloy powdered, and combined (in the crucible) with nitre 6, and cream of tartar 6, added gradually. The mixture while still hot was transferred to a matrass containing strong alcohol 32, digested, and filtered.
Besides mercury and antimony, of which he made great use, iron, lead, copper, and arsenic were among the mineral medicines prescribed by him. He made an arseniate of potash by heating arsenic with saltpetre. He had great faith in vitriol, and the spirit which he extracted from it by distillation. This “spirit” he again distilled with alcohol and thereby produced an ethereal solution. His “specificum purgans” was afterwards said to be sulphate of potash. He recommended sublimed sulphur in inflammatory maladies, saffron of Mars in dysentery, and salts of tin against worms.
Whether his formulas were purposely obscure in so many cases, or whether mystery is due to the carelessness or ignorance of the copyists cannot be known. Much of his chemical and pharmaceutical advice is clear enough.
Honey he extols as a liquor rather divine than human, inasmuch as it falls from heaven upon the herbs. To get its quintessence you are to distil from it in a capacious retort a liquid, red like blood. This is distilled over and over again in a bain mariæ until you get a liquid of the colour of gold and of such pleasant odour that the like cannot be found in the world. This quintessence is itself good for many things, but from it the precious potable gold may be made. The juice of a lemon with this quintessence will dissolve leaf gold in warm ashes in forty-eight hours. With this Paracelsus says he has effected many wonderful cures which people thought he accomplished by enchantment. Elsewhere he speaks of an arcanum drawn from vitriol which is so excellent that he prefers it to that drawn from gold.
He refers with great respect to alchemy and the true alchemists, but with considerable shrewdness in regard to their professions of transmuting other metals into gold. He considered it remarkable that a man should be able to convert one substance into another in a few short days or weeks, while Nature requires years to bring about a similar result; but he will not deny the possibility. What he insists on, however, is that from metals and fire most valuable remedies can be obtained; and the apothecary who does not understand the right way of producing these is but a servant in the kitchen, and not a master cook.
Hellebore was an important medicine with Paracelsus. The white, he said, was suitable for persons under 50, the black for persons over 50. Physicians ought to understand that Nature provides different medicines for old and for young persons, for men and for women. The ancient physicians, although they did not know how to get the essence of the hellebore, had discovered its value for old persons. They found that people who took it after 50 became younger and more vigorous. Their method was to gather the hellebore when the moon was in one of the signs of conservation, to dry it in an east wind, to powder it and mix with it its own weight of sugar. The dose of this powder was as much as could be taken up with three fingers night and morning. The vaunted essence was simply a spirituous tincture. It was more effective if mistletoe, pellitory and peony seeds were combined with it. It was a great remedy for epilepsy, gout, palsy and dropsy. In the first it not merely purges out the humours, but drives away the epileptic body itself. The root must be gathered in the waning of the moon, when it is in the sign Libra, and on a Friday.
Paracelsus (a).
Paracelsus made balsam from herbs by digesting them in their own moisture until they putrefied, and then distilling the putrefied material. He obtained a number of essential oils and used them freely as quintessences. He defines quintessences thus:—Every substance is a compound of various elements, among which there is one which dominates the others, and impresses its own character on the compound. This dominating element, disengaged, is the quintessence. This term he obtained from Aristotle.
His oil of eggs was obtained by boiling the eggs very hard, then powdering them, and distilling until an oil rose to the surface. This he recommended against scalds and burns. Oil of aniseed he prescribed in colds to be put in the nostrils and applied to the temples on going to bed. Oil of tartar rectified in a sand-bath until it acquires a golden colour will cure ulcers and stone. Coral would quicken fancy, but drive away vain visions, spectres, and melancholy. Oil of a man’s excrements, twice distilled, is good to apply in fistulas, and also in baldness. Oil of a man’s skull which had never been buried got by distillation was given in 3 grain doses for epilepsy.
Paracelsus (b).
He had abundant faith in animal remedies. His “Confectio Anti-Epileptica,” formulated by his interpreter, Oswald Crollius, is as follows:—First get three human skulls from men who have died a violent death and have not been buried. Dry in the air and coarsely crush. Then place in a retort and apply a gradually increasing heat. The liquor that passed over was to be distilled three times over the same fæces. Eight ounces of this liquor were to be slowly distilled with 3 drachms each of species of diamusk, castorum, and anacardine honey. To the distilled liquor 4 scruples of liquor of pearls and one scruple of oil of vitriol were to be added. Of the resulting medicine one teaspoonful was to be taken in the morning, fasting, by epileptic subjects, for nine days consecutively.
Paracelsus (c).
An Arcanum Corallinum of Paracelsus which was included in some of the earlier London Pharmacopœias, was simply red precipitate prepared in a special manner. The Committee of the College of Physicians which sat in 1745 to revise that work rejected this product with the remark that an arcanum was not a secret known only to some adept, but was simply a medicine which produces its effect by some hidden property. (This might be said of many medicines now as well as then.) They recognised, however, that “Paracelsus, whose supercilious ignorance merits our scorn and indignation,” did use the term in the sense of a secret remedy.
The Pharmacy of Paracelsus is so frequently referred to in other sections of this book that it is not necessary to deal with it here at greater length. It is evident, however, that some of the formulas he devised, some of the names he coined, and some of the theories he advanced have entered into our daily practice; and even the dogmas now obsolete which are sometimes quoted to show how superior is our knowledge to his, served to quicken thought and speculation.
Portraits of Paracelsus.
The portraits of Paracelsus to be found in old books, as well as some celebrated paintings, are curiously various as likenesses. The oldest and by far the most frequent representation of him on title pages of his works is more or less similar to the portrait marked A, p. 247. This particular drawing was copied from one in the print room of the British Museum. Portrait B is copied from a painting attributed to Rubens which was for a long time in the Duke of Marlborough’s collection at Blenheim. It was sold publicly in 1886 in London for £125 and is now in the “Collection Kums” at Antwerp. There is a similar painting, believed to be a copy of this one, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
In the year 1875, at an exhibition of historical paintings held at Nancy (France), a painting “attributed to Albert Dürer,” and bearing his name in a cartouche, was exhibited and described as “Portrait presumé de Paracelse.” It was not a copy but was unmistakably the same person as the one shown in the painting of Rubens. It came from a private collection and was sold to a local dealer for 2,000 francs, and afterwards disposed of to an unknown stranger for 3,000 francs. It has not been traced since. Dürer died in 1528 (thirteen years before the date of the death of Paracelsus). There is no mention of this likeness in any of his letters. It may have been the work of one of his pupils.
The third portrait (C) which is unlike either of the others professes to have been painted from life (“Tintoretto ad vivum pinxit”) by Jacope Robusti, more commonly known as Tintoretto. The original has not been found, and the earliest print from it was a copper-plate engraving in a collection issued by Bitiskius of Geneva in 1658. The picture here given is a reduced copy of that engraving from a phototype made by Messrs. Angerer and Göschl, of Vienna, and published in a valuable work by the late Dr. Carl Aberle in 1890 entitled “Grabdenkmal, Schadel, und Abbildungen des Theophrastus Paracelsus.” The publisher of that book, Mr. Heinrich Dieter, has kindly permitted me to use this picture.
Tintoretto scarcely left Venice all his life, and it has been supposed that he may have become acquainted with Paracelsus when the latter was, as he said he was, an army surgeon in the Venetian army in the years 1521–1525. Dr. Aberle points out that if Tintoretto was born in 1518, as is generally supposed, the painting from life was impossible; even if he was born in 1512, as has also been asserted, it was unlikely. Moreover, the gentle-looking person represented, whose amiable “bedside manner” is obviously depicted in the portrait, could not possibly have been the untamable Paracelsus if any reliance can be placed on the art of physiognomy.