With respect to the elements themselves, Paracelsus admits occasionally their influence on the functions of the body, and the theory of diseases; but he deduces the faculties which they possess from the stars. It was he that first shook the doctrine of the four elements, originally contrived by Empedocles. Alchymy had introduced another set of elements, and the alchymists maintained that salt, sulphur, and mercury, were the true elements of things. Paracelsus endeavoured to reconcile these chemical elements with his cabalistic ideas, and to show more clearly their utility in the theory of medicine. He invented a sideric salt, which can only be perceived by the exquisite senses of a theosophist, elevated by the abnegation of all gross sensuality to a level with pure and spiritual demons. This salt is the cause of the consistence of bodies, and it is it which gives them the faculty of being reproduced from their ashes.
Paracelsus imagined also a sideric sulphur, which being vivified by the influence of the stars, gives bodies the property of growing, and of being combustible. He admits also a sideric mercury, the foundation of fluidity and volatilization. The concourse of these three substances forms the body. In different parts of his works, Paracelsus says, that the elements are composed of these three principles. In plants he calls the salt balsam, the sulphur resin and the mercury gotaronium. In other passages he opposes the assertion of the Galenists, that fire is dry and hot, air cold and moist, earth dry and cold, water moist and cold. Each of these elements, he says, is capable of admitting all qualities, so that in reality there exists a dry water, a cold fire, &c.
I must not omit another remarkable physiological doctrine of Paracelsus, namely, that there exists in the stomach a demon called Archæus, who presides over the chemical operations which take place in it, separating the poisonous from the nutritive part of food, and furnishing the alimentary substances with the tincture, in consequence of which they become capable of being assimilated. This ruler of the stomach, who changes bread into blood, is the type of the physician, who ought to keep up a good understanding with him, and lend him his assistance. To produce a change in the humours ought never to be the object of the true physician, he should endeavour to concentrate all his operations on the stomach and the ruler who reigns in it. This Archæus to whom the name of Nature may also be given, produces all the changes by his own power. It is he alone who cures diseases. He has a head and hands, and is nothing else than the spirit of life, the sideric body of man, and no other spirit besides exists in the body. Each part of the body has also a peculiar stomach in which the secretions are elaborated.
There are, he informs us, five different causes of diseases. The first is the ens astrorum. The constellations do not immediately induce diseases, but they alter and infect the air. This is what, properly speaking constitutes the entity of the stars. Some constellations sulphurize the atmosphere, others communicate to it arsenical, saline, or mercurial qualities. The arsenical astral entities injure the blood, the mercurial the head, the saline the bones and the vessels. Orpiment occasions tumours and dropsies, and the bitter stars induce fever.
The second morbific cause is the ens veneni, which proceeds from alimentary substances: when the archeus is languid putrefaction ensues, either localiter or emuncturaliter. This last takes place when those evacuations, which ought to be expelled by the nose, the intestines, or the bladder, are retained in the body. Dissolved mercury escapes through the pores of the skin, white sulphur by the nose, arsenic by the ears, sulphur diluted with water by the eyes, salt in solution by the urine, and sulphur deliquesced by the intestines.
The third morbific cause of disease is the ens naturale; but Paracelsus subjects to the ens astrorum the principles which the schools are in the habit of arranging among the number of natural causes. The ens spirituale forms the fourth species and the ens deale or Christian entity the fifth. This last class comprehends all the immediate effects of divine predestination.
It would lead us too far if I were to point out the strange methods which he takes to discover the cause of diseases. But his doctrine concerning tartar is too important, and does our fanatic too much credit to be omitted. It is without doubt the most useful of all the innovations which he introduced. Tartar according to him, is the principle of all the maladies proceeding from the thickening of the humours, the rigidity of the solids, or the accumulation of earthy matter. Paracelsus thought the term stone not suitable to indicate that matter, because it applies only to one species of it. Frequently the principle proceeds from mucilage, and mucilage is tartar. He calls this principle tartar (tartarus) because it burns like hellfire, and occasions the most dreadful diseases. As tartar (bitartrate of potash) is deposited at the bottom of the wine-cask, in the same way tartar in the living body is deposited on the surface of the teeth. It is deposited on the internal parts of the body when the archæus acts with too great impetuosity and in an irregular manner, and when it separates the nutritive principle with too much impetuosity. Then the saline spirit unites itself to it and coagulates the earthy principle, which is always present, but often in the state of materia prima without being coagulated.
In this manner tartar, in the state of materia prima, may be transmitted from father to son. But it is not hereditary and transmittable when it has already assumed the form of gout, of renal calculus, or of obstruction. The saline spirit which gives it its form, and causes its coagulation, is seldom pure and free from mixture; usually it contains alum, vitriol, or common salt; and this mixture contributes also to modify the tartarous diseases. The tartar may be likewise distinguished according as it comes from the blood itself, or from foreign matters accumulated in the humours. The great number of calculi which have been found in every part of the body, and the obstructions, confirm the generality of this morbific cause, to which are due most of the diseases of the liver. When the tartarous matter is increased by certain articles of food, renal calculi are engendered, a calculous paroxysm is induced, and violent pain is occasioned. It acts as an emetic, and may even give occasion to death, when the saline spirit becomes corrosive; and when the tartar coagulated by it becomes too irritating.
Tartar, then, is always an excrementitious substance, which in many cases results from the too great activity of the digestive forces. It may make its appearance in all parts of the body, from the irregularity and the activity, too energetic or too indolent, of the archeus; and then it occasions particular accidents relative to each of the functions. Paracelsus enumerates a great number of diseases of the organs, which may be explained by that one cause; and affirms, that the profession of medicine would be infinitely more useful, if medical men would endeavour to discover the tartar before they tried to explain the affections.
Paracelsus points out, also, the means by which we can distinguish the presence of tartar in urine. For this it is necessary, not merely to inspect the urine, but to subject it to a chemical analysis. He declaims violently against the ordinary ouroscopy. He divides urine into internal and external; the internal comes from the blood, and the external announces the nature of the food and drink which has been employed. To the sediment of urine he gives the new name of alcola, and admits three species of it, namely, hypostasis, divulsio, and sedimen. The first is connected with the stomach, the second with the liver, and the third with the kidneys; and tartar predominates in all the three.