The century of Columbus

by James J. Walsh

Quite different from the line of learned physicians who drew their inspiration from the Greek classics of medicine, was another of the great physicians of Columbus' period who ran counter to all the old medical traditions and dared to think for himself. This was Paracelsus, whose motto "qui suus esse potest, non sit alterius"--he who can form an opinion of his own should not borrow that of others--shows the independent character of the man. He broke away from the teachings of medicine in Latin and sought far and wide for anything and everything that might help in the cure of disease. He has been an extremely hard man for historians to estimate and appreciations of him have differed very greatly. There is no doubt at all that he did much to introduce chemical remedies of many kinds into medicine, though he was a decided opponent of the polypharmacy of his day, a heritage from the Arabian [{387}] physicians, who delighted in giving a large number of drugs. There are expressions of his which show how carefully he had thought out the problems of the practice of medicine. He said: "to be a true alchemist is to understand the chemistry of life." "Medicine is not merely a science but an art. It does not consist in compounding pills and plasters and drugs of all kinds, but it deals with the processes of life, which must be understood before they can be guided."

Above all Paracelsus recognized that success in medicine depends on the treatment of the patient rather than his disease, and he insisted on the idea that nature was, as a rule, eminently curative of diseases rather than prone to make the affection worse, as physicians at so many times in the history of medicine seem to have thought. Paracelsus declared that "the knowledge of nature is the foundation of the science of medicine and a physician should be the servant of nature, not her enemy; he should be able to guide and direct her in her struggle for life and not by his unreasonable drugging throw fresh obstacles in the way of recovery." He appreciated very clearly the influence of the mind on the body and said "the powerful will may cure where a doubt will end in failure. The character of the physician may act more powerfully upon the patient than all the drugs employed." He realized also the place of the conditions surrounding the patient as helpful towards his cure. He said: "the physical surroundings of the patient may have a great influence upon the cure of his disease. Diet is an extremely important element of cure and the physician should know how to regulate the diet of the patient." He called attention to the fact that trained attendants sympathetic with the patient are far better for him than relatives who may be over-solicitous and show it, or neglectful because they wish the death of the patient.

Paracelsus was the first to write on occupation diseases and his monograph on "Bergsucht," "miner's disease," is a monument to his power of observation. His clinical acuity is further exemplified by his recognition of the relation between cretinism and endemic goitre. He also wrote a booklet on mineral baths and analyzed mineral waters for bathing and drinking purposes, getting at the iron content of chalybeate [{388}] waters by testing with gallic acid, and the resultant ink reaction, and also demonstrating the presence of other salts. He did more than anyone else to establish properly in medicine the use of opium (as laudanum), mercury, lead, arsenic, and his chemical experiments taught him much about copper sulphate and potassium sulphate and he recognized zinc as an elementary substance.

He did quite as much for medicine by his negative conclusions and his opposition to medical practices that had been common up to his time as by his positive observations. Indeed it might possibly be thought that there was more to his credit from the negative side. He set himself up in strenuous opposition to the silly uroscopy and uromancy by which physicians had deceived others and very often deceived themselves. Something of the value of the urine in medical diagnosis had been recognized in the Middle Ages, and then, as practically always happens in medicine, little-minded men had pretended to be able to learn much more from it than could possibly be revealed by it. Every disease came to have its specific urine and diagnosis and prognosis came to be largely dependent on changes in the color and character of the urine that were in themselves quite insignificant. Paracelsus brushed all this ridiculous nonsense aside, but of course, in doing so, made a great many enemies. Men are much more disturbed, as a rule, by having their false knowledge corrected than their real knowledge amended.

Paracelsus also refused to accept the practically universal persuasion that every disease was an indication for blood-letting. He was sure that in a great many cases this practice did more harm than good. He felt the same way with regard to the almost universal purgation that was being practised for every form of ill. No one recognized better than he that there were poisonous substances in the body which produced serious affections. He was quite willing to be persuaded, too, that these poisonous substances could be at least to some extent removed from the body by purgatives. He feared, however, lest purgation might carry off with it many materials more beneficial to the body than the poisons it would drain were harmful. The idea of an autotoxemia or an autointoxication [{389}] is constantly recurring in medicine, and the supposed remedies for its cure prove subsequently nearly always to have done more harm than good. Medicine owes much to Paracelsus for his firm stand in this matter. Shakespeare's genius in intuition was right when in "All's Well That Ends Well" he ranged the modern German with one of the greatest of the ancients. "So say I, both of Galen and Paracelsus."

Meyer in his "History of Chemistry" has summed up what Paracelsus accomplished by the co-ordination of chemistry and medicine. As it is not the purpose of the great German historian of chemistry to give a panegyric of Paracelsus but simply to indicate his place in the history of chemical evolution, that opinion must have great weight. He said, page 71: [Footnote 36]

[Footnote 36: "A History of Chemistry, from Earliest Times to the Present Day: Being also an Introduction to the Study of the Science," by Ernst von Meyer, Professor of Chemistry in the Technical High School, Dresden; translated, with the author's sanction, by George McGowan, Ph.D.; third edition; London: Macmillan and Co., 1906.]

"Paracelsus was the man who, in the first half of the sixteenth century, opened out new paths for chemistry and medicine by joining them together. To him is undoubtedly due the merit of freeing chemistry from the restrictive fetters of alchemy, by a clear definition of scientific aims. He taught that 'the object of chemistry is not to make gold but to prepare medicines.' True chemical remedies had been used now and again before his time, but Paracelsus differed from his predecessors in the theoretical motives which led him to employ them. He regarded the healthy human body as a combination of certain chemical matters; when these underwent change in any way, illness resulted, and the latter could therefore only be cured by means of chemical medicines. The foregoing sentence contains the quintessence of Paracelsus' doctrine; the principles of the old school of Galen were quite incompatible with it, these having nothing to do with chemistry."

His contributions to surgery are almost more important than those to medicine, for he insisted on keeping wounds clean and deprecated the meddlesome surgery of the time. Cutting loose from everything that had been taught before his time, he [{390}] almost necessarily made many mistakes. Besides, in spite of his insistence on scientific demonstration, he accepted many things for which there was no good reason. His works, most of which we owe not directly to himself but to his students, contain many absurdities. There is no doubt at all, however, that he was a great genius and that the medicine of this century and of succeeding generations owes much to him. He well deserves the name of the Father of Pharmaceutical Chemistry which has sometimes been given to him. He represents one of the important links in the tradition of medicine and is a man who is ever more appreciated the more we have learned about him through recent studies of his writings." [Footnote 37]

[Footnote 37: Even Paracelsus' mistakes have had something of genius in them. Above all, his influence has lived on through the generations. His doctrine of signatures and his study of the effects of poisons on the human system had more to do than anything else with the establishment of the therapeutic systems of Hahnemann and Rademacher.]