Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/449

 Adolphe Gubler of Paris credits Paracelsus with the distinction of having been the first physician to give an impetus to the movement which had for its object the application of chemistry to the perfection of medicinal preparations. He also maintains that Paracelsus should be looked upon as in a large degree the originator of specific remedies, and that he is justly entitled to the distinction of having been the first publicly to announce the "quintessences"—that is, the active principles (vegetable alkaloids)—of drugs. According to this claim it is understood that Paracelsus taught that each drug contained a specially active elementary body which it was possible to extract as a separate substance. Acting upon this belief Paracelsus did not hesitate to give the preference to the pharmaceutical preparations known as "tinctures"—that is, alcoholic extracts. Great credit is also due to Paracelsus for his rejection of the doctrine that guaiac is an efficient remedy against syphilis, and for his insistence that mercury is the only useful agent in curing that disease. Tartar emetic (potassium antimonyl tartrate) is one of the drugs the introduction of which into our pharmacopoeia should be credited to Paracelsus.

One of the earliest references to genuine diphtheria is to be found in the writings of Paracelsus, who speaks of the disease in the following terms:—

When this disease is located in an external wound it not infrequently spreads to the muscles of the larynx; and, vice versa, when a person has the disease in his throat, and at the same time happens to have an external wound, the malady is likely to spread to the wound.

Paracelsus' idea of the existence of an "archaeus," a power which presides over all physiological actions as well as over all the operations of medicinal drugs, resembles very closely the "vital force," or "animism" so strongly championed by Stahl in the seventeenth century.

From all that I have said above regarding the excitable nature of Paracelsus it seems almost a waste of time to tell our readers that his contributions to the science of