Sect. I.—The Mystical School.
IN order to abbreviate as much as can conveniently be done the historical view which I have now to take, I shall altogether pass over the physiological speculations of the ancients, and begin my survey with the general revival of science in modern times.
We need not dwell long on the fantastical and unsubstantial doctrines concerning physiology which prevailed in the sixteenth century, and which flowed in a great measure from the fertile but ill-regulated imaginations of the cultivators of Alchemy and Magic. One of the prominent doctors of this school is the celebrated Paracelsus, whose doctrines contained a combination of biblical interpretations, visionary religious notions, fanciful analogies, and bold experiments in practical medicine. The opinion of a close but mystical resemblance of parts between the universe and the human body,—the Macrocosm and the Microcosm,—as these two things, thus compared, were termed, had probably come down from the Neoplatonists; it was adopted by the Paracelsists[1], and connected with various astrological dreams and cabbalistic riddles. A succession of later Paracelsists[2], Rosicrucians, and other fanatics of the same kind, continued into the seventeenth century. Upon their notions was founded the pretension of curing wounds by a sympathetic powder, which Sir Kenelm Digby, among others, asserted; while animal magnetism, and the transfer of diseases from one person to another[3], were maintained by others of this [175] school. They held, too, the doctrines of astral bodies corresponding to each terrestrial body; and of the signatures of plants, that is, certain features in their external form by which their virtues might be known. How little advantage or progress real physiology could derive from speculations of this kind may be seen from this, that their tendency was to obliterate the distinction between living and lifeless things: according to Paracelsus, all things are alive, eat, drink, and excrete; even minerals and fluids[4]. According to him and his school, besides material and immaterial beings, there are elementary Spirits which hold an intermediate place, Sylvans, Nymphs, Gnomes, Salamanders, &c. by whose agency various processes of enchantment may be achieved, and things apparently supernatural explained. Thus this spiritualist scheme dealt with a world of its own by means of fanciful inventions and mystical visions, instead of making any step in the study of nature.
[1] Spr. iii. 456.
[2] Ib. iv. 270.
[3] Ib. iv. 276.
[4] Spr. iii. 458. Parac. De Vita Rerum Naturalium, p. 889.
Perhaps, however, one of the most fantastical of the inventions of Paracelsus may be considered as indicating a perception of a peculiar character in the vital powers. According to him, the business of digestion is performed by a certain demon whom he calls Archæus, who has his abode in the stomach, and who, by means of his alchemical processes, separates the nutritive from the harmful part of our food, and makes it capable of assimilation[5]. This fanciful notion was afterwards adopted and expanded by Van Helmont[6]. According to him the stomach and spleen are both under the direction of this Master-spirit, and these two organs form a sort of Duumvirate in the body.
[5] Ib. iii. 468.