Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/19

Rh in medical practise was unpardonable heresy to the guild of physicians.

Paracelsus must be credited with the ability to appreciate the failings of the profession and with courage and ability with which he addressed himself to the task of breaking down the wall of inertia and tradition behind which the medical profession had entrenched itself. In this task he found but scant assistance from within the fold. On the contrary, he soon aroused the liveliest animosity and the most bitter opposition on the part of medical faculties. But opposition did not discourage him. His was the spirit of the propagandist and the fanatic, and antagonism and persecution but intensified the earnestness and the energy with which he labored for the spread of his revolutionary doctrines. That he might appeal to a wider constituency than the hostile academically trained profession, he followed the example of Martin Luther in discarding the use of the Latin language in lectures and writings, and wrote and spoke in his native German. This was also a flagrant offense against professional etiquette and helped to widen the breach between the medical schools and Paracelsus and his pupils and followers.

Irritated by the attacks of his colleagues, he retorted by publicly burning the Canon of Avicenna, as Luther had burned the papal bull, and similarly to show his contempt for the assumed infallibility of the ancient authorities of medicine.

The lines of attack of Paracelsus upon the medical doctrines of his time were mainly three. First: Not the authority of the ancient authors, but observation and experiment must serve as the basis of medical diagnosis and treatment. Second: The substances of the human body are chemically constituted, the processes of the body are chemical processes and hence chemistry must form one of the foundations of rational medicine. Third: The use of the complex mass of decoctions of rare and costly herbs which served as the basis of the Galenic physicians' practise was not founded on reason, but on superstition. In his view every medicinal plant or mineral has an essential principle or spirit and to find and purify these and to apply them to the cure of diseases is a worthy and important aim of chemistry.

Many interesting and valuable improvements in medical practise are attributed to Paracelsus, but it is not the early history of medicine that interests us here except as it is involved with the development of chemistry.

The works of Paracelsus were apparently written between 1526 and his death in 1541, and therefore were written before the publication of the work of the three chemists above mentioned. They are, as collected, a voluminous mass and of heterogeneous character, medical, surgical, philosophical, chemical and theological.

In harmony with his notions of the value of chemically prepared