Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/18

14 knowledge and their ideas as comprehensible as possible for their successors or contemporaries. Theirs was the spirit of service and that is also the spirit of modern science.

The work of these three chemists, however scientific its spirit and method, was not such as to affect immediately the thought of the time in lines outside of the industries they represented, nor to influence the chemical notions of the university faculties—mainly interested in philosophy and medicine.

The fundamental basis of chemical theory of the middle ages—the rudimentary chemical philosophy of the Greek-Arabian philosophers and alchemists—was not seriously affected by the work of these pioneers.

It is to Paracelsus that we are indebted for the impetus that was to inaugurate a broader and livelier interest in chemical activity and in chemical theories. Paracelsus was a man of very different type from his three colleagues already mentioned. A physician by training and profession, as his father was before him, he had traveled much and far—from Sweden to Italy, and from France to Bohemia—as an army surgeon, student or itinerant doctor. Brought up in childhood and in early manhood in mining countries, he had early become interested in the chemistry of the metals and had himself worked in the laboratories of the mines. He was a man of original power, restless activity, great energy and a natural-born revolutionary.

The early influence of philosophers of the fantastic neo-platonic natural philosophy of the Florentine Academy and its followers, had shaken his faith in the accepted Aristotelian and Galenic philosophy which was the basis of medical theory and medical teaching of the time. This revolt from the traditional dogmas, combined with manifestly acute powers of observation and an open mind for such medical or chemical practises or ideas as he met with in the course of his extensive experiences among all classes of people in many lands, resulted apparently in enabling him to surpass the conventionally restricted medical practise of his time in the successful treatment of many diseases. His reputation as a brilliant and able physician attracted early the notice of some of the noted scholars at Basel—and Paracelsus was called to that city as city physician and professor in the university. In his teaching he at once began opposing the conventional dogmas and the antiquated practise of medicine. The history of medicine and the testimony of learned critics of the period such as Erasmus, Agrippa, and Peter Ramus give ample evidence that the time was ripe for a reform in medicine. For centuries all initiative had been discouraged by the accepted infallibility of the traditional Greek and Arab authorities. The medical practise was based on analogical reasonings, and astrology, charms, incantations and exorcisms played an important part. To question the foundations of the medical theory or to introduce