The most important and famous of them is, his Currus triumphalis 4ntimbnii, in which he celebrates the virtues of antimonial medicines, of which he had been the ori ginal discoverer. He first taught the doctrine, that all substances are composed of salt, sulphur, and mercury, which makes so prominent a figure in the writings of some of his successors.
Chemists had for ages hinted at the importance of dis covering a universal remedy, which should be capable of curing, and even of preventing, all diseases; and se veral of them bad asserted, that this remedy was to be found in the philosopher's stone; which not only convert ed base metals into gold, but possessed also the most so vereign virtue, and was capable of curing all diseases in an instant, and even of prolonging life to an indefinite length, and of conferring upon the adepts the gift of immortality upon this earth. This notion gradually gain ed ground, and the word chemistry, in consequence, at length acquired a more extensive signification, and im plied not only the art of making gold, but the art also of preparing the universal medicine. Just about the time that the first of these branches was sinking into discredit, the second, and with it the study of chemistry, acquired an unparalleled degree of celebrity, and attracted the at tention of all Europe. This was owing to the appear ance of that very extraordinary man Theophrastus Para celsus.
He was born in 1493, near Zurich, in Switzerland. His father, who was a medical practitioner, instructed him in physic and surgery. Conceiving a passion for alchymy, he was put under the care of Trithemius, abbot of Spanhcim, and afterwards of Sigismund Fuggerus, from whom he acquired the practical part of the art. Afterwards he visited all the universities of Germany, Italy, France, and Spain, and travelled through almost every country in Europe ; consulting indifferently, phy sicians, barbers, old women, conjurers, and chemists. At the age of 20 he was taken prisoner by the Tartars, and carried before the Czar of Russia, whose son he ac companied in an embassy to Constantinople ; where, as he tells us, he was first let into the secret of the philoso pher's stone. IIe now applied himself to the practice of medicine with so much success, that he acquired, in con sequence, a very great reputation. The venereal dis ease had, a little before, made its appearance in Italy, and was now carrying its ravages over Europe, and baf fling the feeble attempts of the regular physicians of the times. Paracelsus, previously instructed by Carpus of Boulognia in the method of treating it by means of mer cury, cured that formidable disease wherever it present ed itself, with comparative ease, and with the most un bounded applause. Opium, too, which he employed
with freedom, enabled hint to cure, or at least to palliate, many painful disorders.
In the 34th year of his age, when his reputation was at its height, he was appointed by the magistrates of Basle to deliver lectures in their town, and thus was the first public professor of chemistry in Europe ; for before that time, the science was not taught in any university. In two years he quarrelled with the magistrates about a medical fee, and left the city. He rambled up and down the country, his disciples gradually forsook him, he sunk into the deepest dissipation, being scarcely ever sober, and never changing his clothes, not even during the night. At last, in the month of September 1541, he died at Saltzburg, after a few clays illness, in the 47th year of his age. Though he boasted all his life long that he was in possession of the universal medicine, which he called elixir proprietatis, by which he could not only cure all disorders, but prolong his own life to an indefi nite length, and lie actually talked of living to the age of Methuselah.
It is not necessary to draw any character of this extra ordinary man. That he was au impostor, and boasted of secrets which he (lid not know, cannot be denied ; that he stole many opinions, and even facts, from others, is equally true ; his arrogance was insupportable, his bom bast ridiculous, and his whole life a continued tissue of blunders and vice. At the same time, it must be acknow ledged that his talents were great, and that his labours were not entirely useless. He contributed not a little to dethrone Galen and Avicenna, who at that time ruled over medicine with absolute power, and to reinstate Hip pocrates on that chair from which he ought never to have risen. He certainly gave chemistry an eclat which it did not before possess ; and this must have induced many of those laborious men who succeeded him to turn their attention to the science. Nor ought we to forget, that, by carrying his speculations concerning the philosophers' stone and the universal medicine to the greatest height of absurdity, and by exemplifying their emptiness and uselessness in his own person, he undoubtedly contri buted more than any man to their disgrace and subse quent banishment from the science. Just as Mr Hume, by carrying the ideal system to the utmost pitch of ex travagance, may be in some measure considered as the occasion of that general reform in metaphysics which has since taken place.