Paracelsus : the reformer of medicine / by Edward Berdoe.

  • Berdoe, Edward, 1836-1916.
Date:
[1888]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Paracelsus : the reformer of medicine / by Edward Berdoe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    In these prelusive notes we have Mr. Browning's overture to the drama of Paracelsus : Hero and Martyr of Science. We shall find all these recur again and again in the harmony to follow. Mr. Ruskin somewhere divides mankind into three orders of beings : The lowest, sordid, and selfish, which neither sees nor feels; the second, noble and sympathetic, but which sees and feels without concluding or acting; the third and highest, which loses sight in resolution and feeling in work. To this latter class did Paracelsus belong. I go to prove my soul! I shall arrive ! he cries. When a man of this sort comes to feel that way, go forward he must. As Carlyle says : Some arrive; a glorious few; many must be lost, go down upon the floating wreck which they took for land. Nay— Courage! These also, so far as there was any heroism in them, have bequeathed their life as a contribution to us, have valiantly laid their bodies in the chasm for us; of these also there is no ray of heroism lost, and on the whole, what else of them could or should be ' saved ' at any time 1 Courage, and ever forward! We next see Paracelsus in the house of a Greek conjuror at Constantinople. Here Paracelsus attains. It is nine years since he took the diver's plunge for the pearl. Has he secured it? solved the mystery of being, reached the grand secret of life 1 He had not even found its elixir, nor the philosopher's stone, nor the universal solvent. He had discovered modern medicine and the science of chemistry ; but though it cannot be said he was unaware of the great consequences which must follow these discoveries, it is certain that he underrated them in comparison with what he had hoped to have achieved. When he left his home he went to study in the mines of the Tyrol. That was seeing his way without much circuit first; there he was in the region of fact j if he extracted metals it must be with pick and shovel instead of cabalistic formula?. No coaxing and wheedling Nature there, but a fight and a struggle for her treasures. We are told that he learned mining and geology and the use of metals in the practice of medicine. I see, he says, the true use of chemistry is not to make gold, but to prepare medicines. In his sermon on the world's unknown benefactors, Cardinal Newman asks, Who gave us the use of the valuable medicines for the healing of disease 1 and he implies that the inventors are mostly unknown. We shall see what Paracelsus did in this direction. He is rightly termed the father of modern chemistry. He discovered the metals zinc and bismuth and hydrogen gas, and the medical uses of many minerals, the most important of which were mercury and antimony. He gave to medicine the greatest weapon in her armoury