It is claimed that Van Helmont, more than any other teacher of medicine, was instrumental in giving the deathblow to the practice—which prevailed in all the medical schools of that day—of teaching the obsolescent Galenic doctrines, and that for this valuable service alone he deserves full recognition at the hands of the medical profession of to-day. But, as we learn from Ernest von Meyer’s history of chemistry, Van Helmont has a much stronger claim for recognition in the fact that he made many important contributions to iatrochemistry and also to fundamental or pure chemistry. Taking one thing with another, says von Meyer, we may safely assert that Van Helmont’s useful contributions to the medical and chemical sciences by far outweigh those which are of a fantastic or useless nature. It was he, for example, who materially increased our knowledge of the nature of carbonic acid. He demonstrated how it may be extracted from limestone or from potash by the aid of acids, from burning coal, and from wine and beer while they are undergoing fermentation. He also showed that it is present in the stomach, in various mineral waters, and in hollows in the earth. He gave it the name of “gas sylvestre.” He would doubtless have carried his discoveries much farther along if he had possessed the apparatus which is required for such researches. However, despite the lack of these facilities, he was able to describe hydrogen and marsh gas as special varieties which do not possess the same composition as ordinary air. Finally, in his treatise entitled “Pharmacopolium ac dispensatorium modernum” will be found a goodly number of useful instructions as to the proper manner of preparing drugs.
A complete collection of his writings was published at Amsterdam by his son, in 1648, under the title “Ortus medicinae vel opera et opuscula omnia.”
Theophrast von Hohenheim—who is known everywhere throughout the world as “Paracelsus”—was the son of Wilhelm Bombast von Hohenheim, a physician who belonged to one of the noble families of the Duchy of Württemberg. He was born in 1493 at a spot called “Das Hohe Nest” (the lofty nest) in the Canton of Schwyz, about one hour’s distance from the celebrated monastery or cloister of Einsiedeln, of which institution his father was the official physician. Switzerland, therefore, has a right to claim Paracelsus as one of her sons. In 1502 his father transferred his home to Villach, in Carinthia (to the east of Tyrol), and continued to live there up to the time of his death in 1534. It is not known where the son obtained his degree of Doctor of Medicine. It is a well-established fact, however, that he received the first part of his training as a chemist from Johann Trietheim, the Prior of Sponheim, and his subsequent education in the laboratory of Sigmund Fugger, the cultivated owner of wines at Schwatz in the Tyrol. He traveled all over Europe, going from one university to another and making the acquaintance of people who were well informed in matters relating to natural history, chemistry and metallurgy; and during all this time he appears to have absorbed a great deal of information relating to almost every department of human knowledge. Finally in 1526, soon after he had returned to Switzerland, he received, through the aid of certain influential citizens, two important official positions in Basel,—that of City Physician and that of Professor of Medicine and Surgery in the University. To the surprise of all, and contrary to long-established custom, he delivered his lectures in German and not in Latin. This action on his part called forth bitter criticism from the university authorities, but at first it met with the approval of the students. During the following two years, however, he gradually became unpopular with all classes of the community, and was finally obliged to leave Basel. Haeser attributes this unpopularity to Paracelsus’ rough manners, to his intolerance of the opinions of his colleagues, and to his tirades against the apothecaries for their excessive charges. It is very difficult to determine how far jealousy was responsible for the state of affairs which I have just described. Cabanès, the author of an admirable biography of Paracelsus (Revue Scientifique, Paris, May 19, 1894), gives his own estimate of this remarkable man’s character in the following terms: “Poor, miserable, and persecuted during his lifetime, he was misunderstood even after his death, and was calumniated by history.” Paracelsus evidently believed it to be his bounden duty to destroy the then prevailing cult of Aristotle, Galen and Avicenna as the great teachers in medicine; and, filled with this idea, he prophesied the growth of a new science of medicine on the ruins of their teachings. It is stated that the students, after one of these excited lectures, made a bonfire and burned a number of copies of the works of these famous authors, thus showing that Paracelsus was sufficiently eloquent to infuse some of his own reforming spirit into the minds of his auditors. He made a great mistake, however, when he attacked in a similarly violent manner the shortcomings of many of his contemporaries. “The medical profession,” he said, “has become a mere money-making business.” As a natural result of such tirades, Paracelsus was forced to leave Basel. He fled first to Colmar in Alsace and at a later date took refuge in St. Gall, Switzerland; and it was while he resided in that city that he published three books of his “Paramirum.” Then in 1535 he once more resumed his wandering life, in the course of which he visited Poland, Lithuania, Illyria, etc. On reaching Salzburg, in Austria, he fell ill and died on September 24, 1541, at the age of forty-eight.
Paracelsus was a prolific writer. To all the treatises which he published he gave extravagant titles. To his principal work, for example, he gave that of “Paramirum”—The Surprising Marvel; to another, that of “Paragranum”—Grain of Superior Quality; and to a third, that of “Archidoxia,”—Transcendental Science. He wrote treatises on syphilis, on the plague, on epidemics, on the diseases of grave-diggers, on ore-smelters, etc. It is admitted by all his critics that he devoted altogether too much time and thought to alchemy, demonology, necromancy, etc. Cabanès quotes Cruveilhier as saying that Paracelsus believed in the reality of beings of a fantastic nature, but attached little or no importance to them. Then Cabanès himself adds: “The thing which more than anything else absorbed his thoughts was the irresistible desire to overthrow the Galenic idol and substitute for it the science of experience, of observation pure and simple.” Bordes-Pagès, another distinguished French physician, says of this extraordinary man: “The great glory of Paracelsus is to be found in the facts that he cast off the yoke of a former epoch, more speculative than practical; that he summoned physicians to resume their allegiance to experience; and that he opened a long career for the alchemists, upon whom he urged the duty thenceforward of making new remedies the principal object of their researches.... He simplified and spiritualized therapeutics.” Some of Paracelsus’ own sayings are worth preserving: “Without air all living creatures would perish from suffocation.” “Man is the supreme animal, the one last created.” “Alterius non sit, qui suus esse potest” [He who is able to be his own master should not allow himself to be led blindly by another]. When he was accused of being coarse-grained and of deceiving the people, he replied: “By nature and also owing to the kind of 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.”)
Adolphe Gubler of Paris credits Paracelsus with the distinction of having been the first physician to give an impetus to the movement which had for its object the application of chemistry to the perfection of medicinal preparations. He also maintains that Paracelsus should be looked upon as in a large degree the originator of specific remedies, and that he is justly entitled to the distinction of having been the first publicly to announce the “quintessences”—that is, the active principles (vegetable alkaloids)—of drugs. According to this claim it is understood that Paracelsus taught that each drug contained a specially active elementary body which it was possible to extract as a separate substance. Acting upon this belief Paracelsus did not hesitate to give the preference to the pharmaceutical preparations known as “tinctures”—that is, alcoholic extracts. Great credit is also due to Paracelsus for his rejection of the doctrine that guaiac is an efficient remedy against syphilis, and for his insistence that mercury is the only useful agent in curing that disease. Tartar emetic (potassium antimonyl tartrate) is one of the drugs the introduction of which into our pharmacopoeia should be credited to Paracelsus.
One of the earliest references to genuine diphtheria is to be found in the writings of Paracelsus, who speaks of the disease in the following terms:—
When this disease is located in an external wound it not infrequently spreads to the muscles of the larynx; and, vice versa, when a person has the disease in his throat, and at the same time happens to have an external wound, the malady is likely to spread to the wound.