The Cabala constantly directs Paracelsus in his therapeutics and materia medica. As all terrestrial things have their image in the region of the stars, and as diseases depend also on the influence of the stars, we have nothing more to do, in order to obtain a certain cure for these diseases, than to discover, by means of the Cabala, the harmony of the constellations. Gold is a specific against all diseases of the heart, because, in the mystic scale, it is in harmony with that viscus. The liquor of the moon and crystal cure the diseases of the brain. The liquor alkahest and cheiri are efficacious against those of the liver. When we employ vegetable substances, we must consider their harmony with the constellations, and their magical harmony with the parts of the body and the diseases, each star drawing, by a sort of magical virtue, the plant for which it has an affinity, and imparting to it its activity. So that plants are a kind of sublunary stars. To discover the virtues of plants, we must study their anatomy and cheiromancy; for the leaves are their hands, and the lines observable on them enable us to appreciate the virtues which they possess. Thus the anatomy of the chelidonium shows us that it is a remedy for jaundice. These are the celebrated signatures by means of which we deduce the virtues of vegetables, and the medicines of analogy which they present in relation to their form. Medicines, like women, are known by the forms which they affect. He who calls in question this principle, accuses the Divinity of falsehood, the infinite wisdom of whom has contrived these external characters to bring the study of them more upon a level with the weakness of the human understanding. On the corolla of the euphrasia there is a black dot; from this we may conclude that it furnishes an excellent remedy against all diseases of the eye. The lizard has the colour of malignant ulcers, and of the carbuncle; this points out the efficacy which that animal possesses as a remedy.
These signatures were exceedingly convenient for the fanatics, since they saved them the trouble of studying the medical virtues of plants, but enabled them to decide the subject à priori. Paracelsus acted very considerately, when he ascribed these virtues principally to the stars, and affirmed that the observation of favourable constellations is an indispensable condition in the employment of these medicines. “The remedies are subjected to the will of the stars, and directed by them; you ought therefore to wait till heaven is favourable, before ordering a medicine.”
Paracelsus considered all the effects of plants as specifics, and the use of them as secrets. The same notions explain the eulogy which he bestowed on the elixir of long life, and upon all the means which he employed to prolong the term of existence. He believed that these methods, which contained the materia prima, served to repair the constant waste of that matter in the human body. He was acquainted, he says, with four of these arcana, to which he applied the mystic terms, mercury of life, philosopher’s stone, &c. The polygonum persicaria was an infallible specific against all the effects of magic. The method of using it is, to apply it to the suffering part, and then to bury it in the earth. It draws out the malignant spirits like a magnet, and it is buried to prevent these malignant spirits from making their escape.
The reformation of Paracelsus had the great advantage of representing chemistry as an indispensable art in the preparation of medicines. The disgusting decoctions and useless syrups gave place to tinctures, essences, and extracts. Paracelsus says, expressly, that the true use of chemistry is to prepare medicines, and not to make gold. He takes that opportunity of declaiming against cooks and innkeepers, who drown medicines in soup, and thus destroy all their properties. He blames medical men for prescribing simples, or mixtures of simples, and affirms that the object should always be to extract the quintessence of each substance; and he describes at length the method of extracting this quintessence. But he was very little scrupulous about the substances from which this quintessence was to be extracted. The heart of a hare, the bones of a hare, the bone of the heart of a stag, mother-of-pearl, coral, and various other bodies may, he says, be used indiscriminately to furnish a quintessence capable of curing some of the most grievous diseases.
Paracelsus combats with peculiar energy the method of cure employed by the disciples of Galen, directed solely against the predominating humours, and the elementary qualities. He blames them for attempting to correct the action of their medicines, by the addition of useless ingredients. Fire and chemistry, he affirmed, are the sole correctives. It was Paracelsus that first introduced tin as a remedy for worms, though his mode of employing it was not good.
I have been thus particular in pointing out the philosophical and medical opinions of Paracelsus, because they were productive of such important consequences, by setting medical men free from the slavish deference which they had been accustomed to pay to the dogmas of Galen and Avicenna. But it was the high rank to which he raised chemistry, by making a knowledge of it indispensable to all medical men; and by insisting that the great importance of chemistry did not consist in the formation of gold, but in the preparation of medicines, that rendered the era of Paracelsus so important in the history of chemistry; for after his time the art of chemistry was cultivated by medical men in general—it became a necessary part of their education, and began to be taught in colleges and medical schools. The object of chemistry came to be, not to discover the philosopher’s stone, but to prepare medicines; and a great number of new medicines, both from the mineral and vegetable kingdom—some of more, some of less, consequence, soon issued from the laboratories of the chemical physicians.
There can be little doubt that many chemical preparations were either first introduced into medicine by Paracelsus, or at least were first openly prescribed by him: though from the nature of his writings, and the secrecy in which he endeavoured to keep his most valuable remedies, it is not easy to point out what these remedies were. Mercury is said to have been employed in medicine by Basil Valentine; but it was Paracelsus who first used it openly as a cure for the venereal disease, and who drew general attention to it by his encomiums on its medical virtues, and by the eclat of the cures which he performed by means of it, after all the Galenical prescriptions of the schools had been tried in vain.
He ascertained that alum contains, united to an acid, not a metallic oxide, but an earth. He mentions metallic arsenic; but there is some reason for believing that this metal was known to Geber and the Arabian physicians. Zinc is mentioned by him, and likewise bismuth, as substances not truly metallic, but approaching to metals in their properties: for malleability and ductility were considered by him as essential to the metals.[159] I cannot be sure of any other chemical fact which appears in Paracelsus, and which was not known before his time. The use of sal ammoniac in subliming several metallic calces, was familiar to him, but it had long ago been explained by Geber. It is clear also that Geber was acquainted with aqua regia, and that he employed it to dissolve gold. Paracelsus’s reputation as a chemist, therefore, depends not upon any discoveries which he actually made, but upon the great importance which he attached to the knowledge of it, and to his making an acquaintance with chemistry an indispensable requisite of a medical education.
Paracelsus, as the founder of a new system of medicine, the object of which was to draw chemistry out of that state of obscurity and degradation into which it had been plunged, and to give it the charge of the preparation of medicine, and presiding over the whole healing art, deserved a particular notice; and I have even endeavoured, at some length, to lay his system of opinions, absurd as it is, before the reader. But the same attention is not due to the herd of followers who adopted his absurdities, and even carried them, if possible, still further than their master: at the same time there are one or two particulars connected with the Paracelsian sect which it would be improper to omit.
The most celebrated of his followers was Leonhard Thurneysser-zum-Thurn, who was born in 1530, at Basle, where his father was a goldsmith. His life, like that of his master, was checkered with very extraordinary vicissitudes. In 1560 he was sent to Scotland to examine the lead-mines in that country. In 1558 he commenced miner and sulphur extractor at Tarenz on the Inn, and was so successful, that he acquired a great reputation. He had turned his attention to medicine on the Paracelsian plan, and in 1568 made himself distinguished by several important cures which he performed. In 1570 he published his Quinta Essentia, with wooden cuts, in Munster; from thence he went to Frankfort on the Oder, and published his Piso, a work which treats of waters, rivers, and springs. John George, Elector of Brandenburg, was at that time in Frankfort, and was informed that the treatise of Thurneysser pointed out the existence of a great deal of riches in the March of Brandenburg, till that time unknown. His courtiers, who were anxious to establish mines in their possessions, united in recommending the author. He was consulted about a disease under which the wife of the elector was labouring, and having performed a cure, he was immediately named physician to this prince.