His Mysticism.

In some time, His good time, I shall arrive;He guides me.

In some time, His good time, I shall arrive;

He guides me.

His bitter disappointment with his professorship at Basel, and his contempt for those who brought about his fall there, are depicted, and the effect which the realisation that his aims had proved impossible had on his habits and character is suggested; and at last, on his death-bed in a cell in the Hospital of St. Sebastian at Salzburg, he tells his faithful friend, Festus, who has all his life sought to restrain the ambitions which have possessed him—

You know the obstacles which taught me tricksSo foreign to my nature, envy, hate,Blind opposition, brutal prejudice,Bald ignorance—what wonder if I sankTo humour men the way they most approved.

You know the obstacles which taught me tricks

So foreign to my nature, envy, hate,

Blind opposition, brutal prejudice,

Bald ignorance—what wonder if I sank

To humour men the way they most approved.

“A study of intellectual egotism,” this poem has been called. Paracelsus was an egotist, without doubt. Indeed, egotism seems a ludicrously insignificant term to apply to his gorgeous self-appreciation. But it is, perhaps, a little difficult to recognise the wild untameable energy of this astonishing medical reformer in the prolix preacher represented in the poem.

Butler’s verse (in “Hudibras”) may be taken to represent the popular view held about Paracelsus after the first enthusiasm of his followers had cooled down

Bombastus kept a Devil’s bird,Shut in the pommel of his sword,That taught him all the cunning pranksOf past and future mountebanks.

Bombastus kept a Devil’s bird,

Shut in the pommel of his sword,

That taught him all the cunning pranks

Of past and future mountebanks.

German studies of Paracelsus have been very numerous during the past fifty years, and the general tendency has been greatly to enhance his fame.

After the death of Paracelsus, the Archbishop of Cologne desired to collect his works, many of which were in manuscript and scattered all over Germany. By this time there were many treatises attributed to him which he never wrote. It was a paying business to discover a new document by the famous doctor. It is believed that the fraudulent publications were far more numerous than the genuine ones, and it is quite possible that injustice has been done to his memory by the association with his name of some other peoples’ absurdities.

The mystic views of Paracelsus, or those attributed to him, are curious rather than useful. He seemed to have had as much capacity for belief as he had disbelief in other philosophers’ speculations. He believed in gnomes in the interior of the earth, undines in the seas, sylphs in the air, and salamanders in fire. These were the Elementals, beings composed of soul-substance, but not necessarily influencing our lives. The Elementals know only the mysteries of the particular element in which they live. There is life in all matter. Every mineral, vegetable, and animal has its astral body.

That of the minerals is called Stannar or Trughat; of the vegetable kingdom, Leffas; while the astral bodies of animals are their Evestra. The Evestrum may travel about apart from its body; it may live long after the death of the body. Ghosts are, in fact, the Evestra of the departed. If you commit suicide the Evestrum does not recognise the act; it goes on as if the body were going on also until its appointed time.

Man is a microcosm; the universe is the macrocosm. Not that they are comparable to each other; they are one in reality, divided only by form. If you are not spiritually enlightened you may not be able to perceive this. Each plant on earth has its star. There is a stella absinthii, a stella rorismarini. If we could compile a complete “herbarium spirituale sidereum” we should be fully equipped to treat disease. Star influences also form our soul-essences. This accounts for our varying temperaments and talents.

The material part of man, the living body, is the Mumia. This is managed by the Archæus, which rules over everybody; it is the vital principle. It provides the internal balsam which heals wounds or diseases, and controls the action of the various organs.

His theories of mercury, sulphur, and salt, as the constituents of all things, seem at first likely to lead to something conceivable if not credible. But before we grasp the idea we are switched off into the spiritual world again. It is the sidereal mercury, sulphur, and salt, spirit, soul, and body, to which he is alluding.

These fantastic notions permeate all the medical treatises of Paracelsus. But every now and then thereare indications of keen insight which go some way towards explaining his success as a physician; for it cannot be doubted that he did effect many remarkable cures. His European fame was not won by mere boasting. His treatise,De Morbis ex Tartare oriundus, is admittedly full of sound sense.

Some of his chemical observations are startling for their anticipations of later discoveries. If there were no air, he says, all living beings would die. There must be air for wood to burn. Tin, calcined, increases in weight; some air is fixed on the metal. When water and sulphuric acid attack a metal there is effervescence; that is due to the escape of some air from the water. He calls metals that have rusted, dead.

Saffron of Mars (the peroxide) is dead iron. Verdigris is dead copper. Red oxide of mercury is dead mercury. But, he adds, these dead metals can be revivified, “reduced to the metallic state,” are his exact words (and it is to be noted that he was the first chemist to employ the term “reduce” in this sense), by means of coal. Elsewhere he describes digestion as a solution of food; putrefaction as a transmutation. He knew how to separate gold from silver by nitric acid. It is quite certain that the writer of Paracelsus’s works was a singularly observant and intelligent chemist. He had “a wolfish hunger after knowledge,” says Browning.

“Have you heard,” wrote Gui Patin to a friend a hundred years after the death of the famous revolutionary, “that 'Paracelsus’ is being printed at Geneva in four volumes in folio? What a shame that so wicked a book should find presses and printers which cannot be found for better things. I would rather see the Koran printed. It would not deceive so many people. Chemistry is the false money of our profession.”

The composition of Paracelsus’s laudanum, the name of which he no doubt invented, has never been satisfactorily ascertained. Paracelsus himself made a great secret of it, and probably used the term for several medicines. It was generally, at least, a preparation of opium, sometimes opium itself. He is believed to have carried opium in the pommel of his sword, and this he called the “stone of immortality.”

Next to opium he believed in mercury, and was largely influential in popularising this metal and its preparations for the treatment of syphilis. It was principally employed externally before his time. He mocked at “the wooden doctors with their guaiacum decoctions,” and at the “waggon grease with which they smeared their patients.” He used turpith mineral (the yellow sulphate), and alembroth salt (ammonio-chloride), though he did not invent these names, and it is possible that he did not mean by them the same substances as the alchemists did. Operinus states that he always gave precipitated mercury (red precipitate, apparently) as a purgative. He gave it in pills with a little theriaca or cherry juice. This he also appears to have designated laudanum. It is certain that he gave other purgatives besides.

It must be admitted that if Basil Valentine is a mythical character, the reputation of Paracelsus is greatly enhanced. Nowhere does the latter claim to have been the first to introduce antimony into medical practice, but it is certain that it could not have been used to any great extent before his time. If we suppose that the works attributed to Basil Valentine were fictitious, so far, that is, as their authorship isconcerned, they were compiled about fifty years after the death of Paracelsus, and at the time when his fame was at its zenith. Many of the allusions to antimony contained in those treatises might have been collected from the traditions of the master’s conversations and writings, much from his immediate disciples, and the whole skilfully blended by a literary artist.

Paracelsus praises highly his magistery of antimony, the essence, the arcanum, the virtue of antimony. Of this, he says, you will find no account in your books of medicine. This is how to prepare it. Take care at the outset that nothing corrupts the antimony; but keep it entire without any change of form. For under this form the arcanum lies concealed. No deadhead must remain, but it must be reduced by a third cohobation into a third nature. Then the arcanum is yielded. Dose, 4 grains taken with quintessence of melissa.

His “Lilium,” or tinctura metallorum, given as an alterative and for many complaints, was formulated in a very elaborate way by his disciples, but simplified it consisted of antimony, 4, tin 1, copper 1, melted together in a crucible, the alloy powdered, and combined (in the crucible) with nitre 6, and cream of tartar 6, added gradually. The mixture while still hot was transferred to a matrass containing strong alcohol 32, digested, and filtered.

Besides mercury and antimony, of which he made great use, iron, lead, copper, and arsenic were among the mineral medicines prescribed by him. He made an arseniate of potash by heating arsenic with saltpetre. He had great faith in vitriol, and the spirit which he extracted from it by distillation. This “spirit” he again distilled with alcohol and thereby produced an ethereal solution. His “specificum purgans” wasafterwards said to be sulphate of potash. He recommended sublimed sulphur in inflammatory maladies, saffron of Mars in dysentery, and salts of tin against worms.

Whether his formulas were purposely obscure in so many cases, or whether mystery is due to the carelessness or ignorance of the copyists cannot be known. Much of his chemical and pharmaceutical advice is clear enough.

Honey he extols as a liquor rather divine than human, inasmuch as it falls from heaven upon the herbs. To get its quintessence you are to distil from it in a capacious retort a liquid, red like blood. This is distilled over and over again in a bain mariæ until you get a liquid of the colour of gold and of such pleasant odour that the like cannot be found in the world. This quintessence is itself good for many things, but from it the precious potable gold may be made. The juice of a lemon with this quintessence will dissolve leaf gold in warm ashes in forty-eight hours. With this Paracelsus says he has effected many wonderful cures which people thought he accomplished by enchantment. Elsewhere he speaks of an arcanum drawn from vitriol which is so excellent that he prefers it to that drawn from gold.

He refers with great respect to alchemy and the true alchemists, but with considerable shrewdness in regard to their professions of transmuting other metals into gold. He considered it remarkable that a man should be able to convert one substance into another in a few short days or weeks, while Nature requires years to bring about a similar result; but he will not deny the possibility. What he insists on, however, is that from metals and fire most valuable remedies can be obtained; and the apothecary who does not understand the rightway of producing these is but a servant in the kitchen, and not a master cook.

Hellebore was an important medicine with Paracelsus. The white, he said, was suitable for persons under 50, the black for persons over 50. Physicians ought to understand that Nature provides different medicines for old and for young persons, for men and for women. The ancient physicians, although they did not know how to get the essence of the hellebore, had discovered its value for old persons. They found that people who took it after 50 became younger and more vigorous. Their method was to gather the hellebore when the moon was in one of the signs of conservation, to dry it in an east wind, to powder it and mix with it its own weight of sugar. The dose of this powder was as much as could be taken up with three fingers night and morning. The vaunted essence was simply a spirituous tincture. It was more effective if mistletoe, pellitory and peony seeds were combined with it. It was a great remedy for epilepsy, gout, palsy and dropsy. In the first it not merely purges out the humours, but drives away the epileptic body itself. The root must be gathered in the waning of the moon, when it is in the sign Libra, and on a Friday.

Paracelsus (a).

Paracelsus made balsam from herbs by digesting them in their own moisture until they putrefied, and then distilling the putrefied material. He obtained a number of essential oils and used them freely as quintessences. He defines quintessences thus:—Every substance is a compound of various elements, among which there is one which dominates the others, and impresses its own character on the compound. This dominating element, disengaged, is the quintessence. This term he obtained from Aristotle.

His oil of eggs was obtained by boiling the eggs very hard, then powdering them, and distilling until an oil rose to the surface. This he recommended against scalds and burns. Oil of aniseed he prescribed in colds to be put in the nostrils and applied to the temples on going to bed. Oil of tartar rectified in a sand-bath until it acquires a golden colour will cure ulcers and stone. Coral would quicken fancy, but drive away vain visions, spectres, and melancholy. Oil of a man’s excrements, twice distilled, is good to apply in fistulas, and also in baldness. Oil of a man’s skull which had never been buried got by distillation was given in 3 grain doses for epilepsy.

Paracelsus (b).

He had abundant faith in animal remedies. His “Confectio Anti-Epileptica,” formulated by his interpreter, Oswald Crollius, is as follows:—First get three human skulls from men who have died a violent death and have not been buried. Dry in the air and coarsely crush. Then place in a retort and apply a gradually increasing heat. The liquor that passed over was to be distilled three times over the same fæces. Eight ounces of this liquor were to be slowly distilled with 3 drachms each of species of diamusk, castorum, and anacardine honey. To the distilled liquor 4 scruples of liquor of pearls and one scruple of oil of vitriol were to be added. Of the resulting medicineone teaspoonful was to be taken in the morning, fasting, by epileptic subjects, for nine days consecutively.

Paracelsus (c).

An Arcanum Corallinum of Paracelsus which was included in some of the earlier London Pharmacopœias, was simply red precipitate prepared in a special manner. The Committee of the College of Physicians which sat in 1745 to revise that work rejected this product with the remark that an arcanum was not a secret known only to some adept, but was simply a medicine which produces its effect by some hidden property. (This might be said of many medicines nowas well as then.) They recognised, however, that “Paracelsus, whose supercilious ignorance merits our scorn and indignation,” did use the term in the sense of a secret remedy.

The Pharmacy of Paracelsus is so frequently referred to in other sections of this book that it is not necessary to deal with it here at greater length. It is evident, however, that some of the formulas he devised, some of the names he coined, and some of the theories he advanced have entered into our daily practice; and even the dogmas now obsolete which are sometimes quoted to show how superior is our knowledge to his, served to quicken thought and speculation.

Portraits of Paracelsus.The portraits of Paracelsus to be found in old books, as well as some celebrated paintings, are curiously various as likenesses. The oldest and by far the most frequent representation of him on title pages of his works is more or less similar to the portrait markedA, p. 247. This particular drawing was copied from one in the print room of the British Museum. PortraitBis copied from a painting attributed to Rubens which was for a long time in the Duke of Marlborough’s collection at Blenheim. It was sold publicly in 1886 in London for £125 and is now in the “Collection Kums” at Antwerp. There is a similar painting, believed to be a copy of this one, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.In the year 1875, at an exhibition of historical paintings held at Nancy (France), a painting “attributed to Albert Dürer,” and bearing his name in a cartouche, was exhibited and described as “Portrait presumé de Paracelse.” It was not a copy but was unmistakably the same person as the one shown in the painting of Rubens. It came from a private collection and was sold to a local dealer for 2,000 francs, and afterwards disposed of to an unknown stranger for 3,000 francs. It has not been traced since. Dürer died in 1528 (thirteen years before the date of the death of Paracelsus). There is no mention of this likeness in any of his letters. It may have been the work of one of his pupils.The third portrait (C) which is unlike either of the others professes to have been painted from life (“Tintoretto ad vivum pinxit”) by Jacope Robusti, more commonly known as Tintoretto. The original has not been found, and the earliest print from it was a copper-plate engraving in a collection issued by Bitiskius of Geneva in 1658. The picture here given is a reduced copy of that engraving from a phototype made by Messrs. Angerer and Göschl, of Vienna, and published in a valuable work by the late Dr. Carl Aberle in 1890 entitled “Grabdenkmal, Schadel, und Abbildungen des Theophrastus Paracelsus.” The publisherof that book, Mr. Heinrich Dieter, has kindly permitted me to use this picture.Tintoretto scarcely left Venice all his life, and it has been supposed that he may have become acquainted with Paracelsus when the latter was, as he said he was, an army surgeon in the Venetian army in the years 1521–1525. Dr. Aberle points out that if Tintoretto was born in 1518, as is generally supposed, the painting from life was impossible; even if he was born in 1512, as has also been asserted, it was unlikely. Moreover, the gentle-looking person represented, whose amiable “bedside manner” is obviously depicted in the portrait, could not possibly have been the untamable Paracelsus if any reliance can be placed on the art of physiognomy.

The portraits of Paracelsus to be found in old books, as well as some celebrated paintings, are curiously various as likenesses. The oldest and by far the most frequent representation of him on title pages of his works is more or less similar to the portrait markedA, p. 247. This particular drawing was copied from one in the print room of the British Museum. PortraitBis copied from a painting attributed to Rubens which was for a long time in the Duke of Marlborough’s collection at Blenheim. It was sold publicly in 1886 in London for £125 and is now in the “Collection Kums” at Antwerp. There is a similar painting, believed to be a copy of this one, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

In the year 1875, at an exhibition of historical paintings held at Nancy (France), a painting “attributed to Albert Dürer,” and bearing his name in a cartouche, was exhibited and described as “Portrait presumé de Paracelse.” It was not a copy but was unmistakably the same person as the one shown in the painting of Rubens. It came from a private collection and was sold to a local dealer for 2,000 francs, and afterwards disposed of to an unknown stranger for 3,000 francs. It has not been traced since. Dürer died in 1528 (thirteen years before the date of the death of Paracelsus). There is no mention of this likeness in any of his letters. It may have been the work of one of his pupils.

The third portrait (C) which is unlike either of the others professes to have been painted from life (“Tintoretto ad vivum pinxit”) by Jacope Robusti, more commonly known as Tintoretto. The original has not been found, and the earliest print from it was a copper-plate engraving in a collection issued by Bitiskius of Geneva in 1658. The picture here given is a reduced copy of that engraving from a phototype made by Messrs. Angerer and Göschl, of Vienna, and published in a valuable work by the late Dr. Carl Aberle in 1890 entitled “Grabdenkmal, Schadel, und Abbildungen des Theophrastus Paracelsus.” The publisherof that book, Mr. Heinrich Dieter, has kindly permitted me to use this picture.

Tintoretto scarcely left Venice all his life, and it has been supposed that he may have become acquainted with Paracelsus when the latter was, as he said he was, an army surgeon in the Venetian army in the years 1521–1525. Dr. Aberle points out that if Tintoretto was born in 1518, as is generally supposed, the painting from life was impossible; even if he was born in 1512, as has also been asserted, it was unlikely. Moreover, the gentle-looking person represented, whose amiable “bedside manner” is obviously depicted in the portrait, could not possibly have been the untamable Paracelsus if any reliance can be placed on the art of physiognomy.

This well-known writer, whose “Herbal” has been familiar to many past generations as a family medicine book, deserves a place among our Masters in Pharmacy for the freedom, and occasional acuteness with which he criticised the first and second editions of the London Pharmacopœia. One specimen of his sarcastic style must suffice. The official formula for Mel Helleboratum was to infuse 3 lbs. of white hellebore in 14 lbs. of water for three days; then boil it to half its bulk; strain; add 3 lbs. of honey and boil to the consistence of honey. This is Culpepper’s comment (in his “Physicians’ Library”):—

“What amonstrum horrendum, horrible, terrible recipe have we got here:—A pound of white hellebore boiled in 14 lbs. of water to seven. I would ask the College whether the hellebore will not lose its virtue in the twentieth part of this infusion and decoction (for it must be infused, forsooth, three days to a minute) if a man may make so bold as to tell them the truth. A Taylor’s Goose being boiled that time would make a decoction near as strong as the hellebore, but this they will not believe. Well, then, be it so. Imagine the hellebore still remaining in its vigour after being so long tired out with a tedious boiling (for less boiling would boil an ox), what should the medicine do? Purge melancholy, say they. But from whom? From men or beasts? The devil would not take it unless it were poured down his throat with a horn. I will not say they intended to kill men,cum privilegio; that’s too gross. Icharitably judge them. Either the virtue of the hellebore will fly away in such a martyrdom, or else it will remain in the decoction. If it evaporate away, then is the medicine good for nothing; if it remain in it is enough to spoil the strongest man living. (1.) Because it is too strong. (2.) Because it is not corrected in the least. And because they have not corrected that, I take leave to correct them.”

Culpepper.(From an old book of his.)

Culpepper.

(From an old book of his.)

This passage is not selected as a favourable specimen of Culpepper’s pharmaceutical skill, but as a sample of the manner in which he often rates “the College.” His own opinions are open to quite as severe criticism. A large part of his lore is astrological; and he is very confident about the doctrine of signatures. But he knew herbs well, and his general advice is sound.

Perhaps many of those who have studied his works have formed the idea that he was a bent old man witha long grey beard, who busied himself with the collection of simples. He was, in fact, a soldier, and died at the early age of 38. His portraits and the descriptions of him by his astrological friends represent him as a smart, brisk young Londoner, fluent in speech and animated in gesture, gay in company, but with frequent fits of melancholy, an extraordinarily good conceit of himself, and plenty of reason for it.

Culpepper’s House.(From an old book of his.)

Culpepper’s House.

(From an old book of his.)

Culpepper lived in the stirring times of the Civil War, and fought on one side or the other, it is not certain which. Most likely, judging from the frequent pious expressions in his works, he was a Parliamentarian. He was severely wounded in the chest in one of the battles, but it is not known in which. It is probable that it was this wound which caused the lung disease from which he died.

Such information as we have of Culpepper’s career is gathered from his own works, and from some brutal attacks on him in certain public prints. He describes himself on the title-pages of some of his big books as “M.D.,” but there is no evidence that he ever graduated. He lived, at least during his married life, at Red Lion Street, Spitalfields, and there he carried on his medicalpractice. Probably it was a large one, for he evidently understood the art of advertising himself. He claims to have been the only doctor in London at the time who gave advice gratis to the poor, and his frequent comments on the cost of the pharmacopœia preparations suggest that the majority of his patients were not of the fashionable class.

Nicholas Culpepper was apprenticed to an apothecary in Great St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, and at the same time a certain Marchmont Nedham was a solicitor’s clerk in Jewry Street. Nedham became the most notorious journalist in England, and founded and edited in turn theMercurius Britannicus, an anti-royalist paper, theMercurius Pragmaticus, violently anti-Commonwealth, and theMercurius Politicus, subsidised by Cromwell’s government, and supervised by Mr. John Milton. This publication, amalgamated with thePublic Intelligencer, its principal rival, has descended to us as theLondon Gazette. Probably Nedham and Culpepper were friends in their early days, and they may have been comrades in arms when the war broke out. But evidently they became fierce enemies later. InMercurius PragmaticusNedham, pretending to review Culpepper’s translation of the official Dispensatory, takes the opportunity of pouring on him a tirade of scurrilous abuse. The translation, he says, “is filthily done,” which was certainly not true. This is the only piece of criticism in the article. The rest deals with the author personally. Nedham informs his readers that Culpepper was the son of a Surrey parson, “one of those who deceive men in matters belonging to their most precious souls.” That meant that he was a Nonconformist. Nicholas himself, according to Nedham, had been an Independent, a Brownist, an Anabaptist, a Seeker, anda Manifestationist, but had ultimately become an Atheist. During his apprenticeship “he ran away from his master upon his lewd debauchery”; afterwards he became a compositor, then a “figure-flinger,” and lived about Moorfields on cozenage. After making vile insinuations about his wife, Nedham states that by two years’ drunken labour Culpepper had “gallimawfred the Apothecaries’ Book into nonsense”; that he wore an old black coat lined with plush which his stationer (publisher) had got for him in Long Lane to hide his knavery, having been till then a most despicable ragged fellow; “looks as if he had been stued in a tanpit; a frowzy headed coxcomb.” He was aiming to “monopolise to himself all the knavery and cozenage that ever an apothecary’s shop was capable of.”

Culpepper’s works answer this spiteful caricature, for at any rate he must have been a man of considerable attainments, and of immense industry. That his writings acquired no little popularity is best proved by the fact that after his death it was good business to forge others somewhat resembling them and pass them off as his.

Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, Baron Aulbone of France, was born at Geneva in 1573, of a Calvinistic family and studied for the medical profession first at Heidelberg and afterwards at Montpellier. Moving to Paris he acquired popularity as a lecturer on anatomy to surgeons, and on pharmacy to apothecaries. His inclination towards chemical remedies brought him to the notice of Rivierus, the first physician to Henri IV, and he was appointed one of the king’s physicians. But his medical heterodoxy offended the faculty, and his Protestantismraised enemies for him at court. The king, who valued Turquet, did his best to persuade him to conform to the Church of Rome as he himself had done, and to moderate the rancour of his professional foes. But he was unsuccessful in both efforts. Still Henri tried to keep him, ignoring his heresies, and perhaps rather sympathising with them. But the queen, Marie de Medici, insisted on Turquet’s dismissal, and the Faculty of Paris was no whit behind the queen in intolerance. Coupling him with a quack named Pierre Pena, a foreigner then practising medicine illicitly at Paris, they issued a decree forbidding all physicians who acknowledged their control to consult with De Turquer, and exhorting practitioners of all nations to avoid him and all similar pests, and to persevere in the doctrines of Hippocrates and Galen.

Turquet de Mayerne came to England evidently with a high reputation, for he was soon appointed first physician to the king (James I) and queen, and held the same position under Charles I and Charles II. He seems to have kept in retirement during the Commonwealth, though in 1628 it appears from his manuscript records (“Ephemerides Anglicæ,” he called them) that he was consulted by a “Mons. Cromwell” whom he describes as “Valde melancholicus.” He died at Chelsea in 1655 at the age of 82. It was in England that he used the name of Mayerne.

De Mayerne exercised a considerable influence on English pharmacy. The Society of Apothecaries owed to him their separate incorporation, and the first London Pharmacopœia was compiled and authorised probably to some extent at his instigation. He certainly wrote the preface to it. Paris quotes him as prescribing among absurd and disgusting remedies “the secundines of awoman in her first labour of a male child, the bowels of a mole cut open alive, and the mummy made of the lungs of a man who had died a violent death.” But such remedies were common to all practitioners in England and France at the time. The principal ingredient in a gout powder which he composed was the raspings of an unburied human skull. He devised an ointment for hypochondria which was called the Balsam of Bats. It contained adders, bats, sucking whelps, earthworms, hog’s grease, marrow of a stag, and the thigh bone of an ox. On the other hand, Mayerne is credited with the introduction of calomel and black wash into medical practice.

Jean Baptiste Van Helmont, born at Brussels in 1577, and died at Vilvorde near that city in 1644, was an erratic genius whose writings and experiments sometimes astonish us by their lucidity and insight, and again baffle us by their mysticism and puerility.

Van Helmont was of aristocratic Flemish descent, and possessed some wealth. He was a voracious student and a brilliant lecturer. At the University of Louvain, however, where he spent several years, he refused to take any degree because he believed that such academic distinctions only ministered to pride. He resolved at the same time to devote his life to the service of the poor, and with this in view he made over his property to his sister, and set himself to study medicine. His gift of exposition was so great that the authorities of the University insisted on his acceptance of the chair of Surgery, though that was the branch of medical practice he knew least about, and though it was contrary to thestatutes of the faculty to appoint a person as Professor not formally qualified.

J. B. Van Helmont.1577–1644.(From an engraving in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.)

J. B. Van Helmont.1577–1644.

(From an engraving in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.)

For a time things went well, but Van Helmont got tired of medical teaching before the University became tired of him. The particular occasion which disgusted him with medical science was that he contracted the itch, and though he consulted many eminent physicians could not get cured of it. He came to the conclusion that the pretended art of healing was a fraud, and he consequently resolved to shake the dust of it from his feet, after he had recovered from the weakening effects of the purgatives which had been prescribed for his complaint.

Then he set forth on his travels, and in the course of them he met with a quack who cured him of his itchby means of sulphur and mercury. After this he became a violent anti-Galenist. He studied the works of Paracelsus, and after some years came back to his native country full of ideas and phantasies.

By marrying a wealthy woman Van Helmont became independent, and his scientific career now commenced. He erected and fitted a laboratory at Vilvorde, and devoted his time and skill to the study of chemistry, medicine, and philosophy. He described himself as “Medicus per Ignem,” and was one of the most earnest believers in the possibility of discovering the philosopher’s stone, and the elixir of life. Indeed he claimed that he had actually transmuted mercury into gold, and by his medical compounds it is alleged that he performed such miraculous cures that the Jesuits actually brought him before the Inquisition.

The advance in chemistry for which he is most famous was the discovery of carbonic acid gas, and the first steps in the recognition of the various kinds of gases. Previous to his discovery chemists had no clear perception of a distinction between the various gases; they reckoned them all as air. Geber and other predecessors of Van Helmont had observed that certain vapours were incorporated in material bodies, and they regarded these as the spirits, or souls, of those bodies. Van Helmont was the first actually to separate and examine one of these vapours. He tracked this gas through many of the compounds in which it is combined or formed: he got it from limestone, from potashes, from burning coal, from certain natural mineral waters, and from the fermentation of bread, wine, and beer. He found that it could be compressed in wines and thus yield the sparkling beverages we know so well. He also observed that it extinguished flame, and asphyxiatedanimals. He alludes to other kinds of vapour, but does not precisely define them. The carbon dioxide he named “gas sylvestre.”

This was the first use of the term gas. “Hunc spiritum, hactenus ignotum, novo nomine gas voco.” (I call this spirit, heretofore unknown, by the new name gas.) What suggested this name to him is not certain. Some have supposed that it was a modification of the Flemish,geest, spirit; by others it is traced to the verbgaschen, to boil, or ferment; and by many its derivation from chaos is assumed.

His physiology was a modification of that of Paracelsus. An Archeus within ruled the organism with the assistance of sub-archei for different parts of the body. Ferments stirred these archei into activity. In this way the processes of digestion were accounted for. The vital spirit, a kind of gas, causes the pulsation of the arteries. The Soul of Man he assigned to the stomach. The exact locality of this important adjunct was a subject of keen discussion among the philosophers of that age. Van Helmont’s conclusive argument for the stomach as its habitation was the undoubted fact that trouble or bad news had the effect of destroying the appetite.

John Rudolph Glauber, who was born at Carlstadt, in Germany, in 1603, contributed largely to pharmaceutical knowledge, and deserves to be remembered by his many investigations, and perhaps even more for the clear common sense which he brought to bear on his chemical work. For though he retained a confident belief in the dreams of alchemy, he does not appear to have let that belief interfere with his practical labour; and some ofhis processes were so well devised that they have hardly been altered from his day to ours.

Not much is known of his history except what he himself wrote or what was related of him by his contemporaries. According to his own account he took to chemistry when as a young man he got cured of a troublesome stomach complaint by drinking some mineral waters. Eager to discover what was the essential chemical in those waters to which he owed his health he set to work on his experiments. The result was the discovery of sulphate of soda, which he called “Sal mirabile,” but which all subsequent generations have known as Glauber’s Salts. This, it happens, was the one of his discoveries of which he was not particularly vain, for he supposed that he had only obtained from another source Paracelsus’s sal enixon, which was in fact sulphate of potash. His own account of this discovery is necessarily of pharmaceutical interest. He gives it in his workDe Natura Salium, as follows:—

In the course of my youthful travels I was attacked at Vienna with a violent fever known there as the Hungarian disease, to which strangers are especially liable. My enfeebled stomach rejected all food. On the advice of several friends I dragged myself to a certain spring situated about a league from Newstadt. I had brought with me a loaf of bread, but with no hope of being able to eat it. Arrived at the spring I took the loaf from my pocket and made a hole in it so that I could use it as a cup. As I drank the water my appetite returned, and I ended by eating the improvised cup in its turn. I made several visits to the spring and was soon miraculously cured of my illness. I asked what was the nature of the water and was told it was “salpeter-wasser.”

Glauber was twenty-one at that time, and knew nothing of chemistry. Later he analysed the water and got from it, after evaporation, long crystals, which, he says, a superficial observer might confuse with saltpetre; but he soon satisfied himself that it was somethingquite different. Subsequently he obtained an identical salt from the residue in his retort after distilling marine salt and vitriol to obtain spirit of salt. As already stated, he believed he had produced the “sal enixon” of Paracelsus. But in memory of the benefit he had himself experienced from its use he gave it the title of “sal mirabile.”

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the sign of “Glauber’s Head” appears to have been used in this country by some chemical manufacturers. The picture annexed is from one of these signs which was used more than a hundred years ago by Slinger and Son, of York, and is now in the possession of Messrs. Raimes and Co., of that city, who have kindly given me a photograph of it. It is a wooden bust which was once gilded, and presumably presents the traditional likeness of the famous German chemist.

This distillation of sulphuric acid with sea-salt, which yielded spirit of salt, or as it is now called hydrochloric acid, was probably Glauber’s principal contribution to the development of chemistry. He observed the gas given off from the salt, and it is a wonder that with his acuteness he did not isolate and describe the element chlorine. He called it the spirit of rectified salt, and described it as a spirit of the colour of fire, which passed into the receiver, and which would dissolve metals and most minerals. He noted that if digested with dephlegmated (concentrated) spirit of wine his spirit of salt formed a layer of oily substance, which was the oil of wine, “an excellent cordial and very agreeable.” He distilled ammonia from bones, and showed how to make sal ammoniac by the addition of sea salt. His sulphate of ammonia, now so largely used as a fertiliser and in the production of other ammonia salts, was known for a long time as “Sal ammoniacum secretum Glauberi.” He made sulphate of copper, and his investigation of the acetum lignorum, now called pyroligneous acid, though he did not claim to have discovered this substance, was of the greatest value. He produced artificial gems, made chlorides of arsenic and zinc, and added considerably to the chemistry of wine and spirit-making.

Glauber worked at many subjects for manufacturers, and sold his secrets in many cases. His enemies asserted that he sold the same secret several times, and that he not unfrequently sold secrets which would not work. It is impossible now to test the truth of these accusations. Probably some of the allegations made against him were due to the fact that those who bought his processes were not as skilful as he was. One secret which he claimed to have discovered he would neithersell nor publish. It was that of the Alkahest, or universal solvent. To make this known might, he feared, “encourage the luxury, pride, and godlessness of poor humanity.”

Oliver Cromwell wrote in an old volume of Glauber’s Alchemy: “This Glauber is an errant knave. I doe bethinke me he speaketh of wonders which cannot be accomplished; but it is lawful for man too the endeavour.”

Glauber complained that he was not appreciated, which was probably true. “I grieve over the ignorance of my contemporaries,” he wrote, “and the ingratitude of men. Men are always envious, wicked, ungrateful. For myself, faithful to the maxim,Ora et Labora, I fulfil my career, do what I can, and await my reward.” Elsewhere he writes, “If I have not done all the good in the world that I should have desired, it has been the perversity of men that has hindered me.” His employees, he says, were unfaithful. Having learned his processes, they became inflated with pride, and left him. Apparently there was a good business to be done in chemical secrets at that time. But Glauber did not give away all he knew, and he found it best to do all his important work himself. “I have learnt by expensive experience,” he wrote, “the truth of the proverb, 'Wer seine Sachen will gethan haben recht, Muss selbsten seyn Herr und Knecht.’”

Although all Glauber’s books appeared with Latin titles they were written in German.

Thomas Goulard was a surgeon of Montpellier with rather more than a local reputation. He was counsellorto the king, perpetual mayor of the town of Alet, lecturer and demonstrator royal in surgery, demonstrator royal of anatomy in the College of Physicians, fellow of the Royal Academies of Sciences in Montpellier, Toulouse, Lyons, and Nancy, pensioner of the king and of the province of Languedoc for lithotomy, and surgeon to the Military Hospital of Montpellier. His treatise on “The Extract of Saturn” was published about the middle of the eighteenth century, and his name and the preparations he devised were soon spread all over Europe. White lead and sugar of lead, and litharge as the basis of plasters had been familiar in medical practice for centuries; and Galen and other great authorities had highly commended lead preparations for eye diseases and for general lotions. The preparation of sugar of lead is indicated in the works attributed to Basil Valentine. Goulard’s special merit consisted in the care which he gave to the production of his “Extract of Saturn,” and in his intelligent experiments with it, and its various preparations in the treatment of external complaints.

Goulard made his extract of Saturn by boiling together golden litharge and strong French wine vinegar at a moderate heat for about an hour, stirring all the while, and after cooling drawing off for use the clear supernatant liquor. Diluting this extract by adding 100 drops to a quart of river water with four teaspoonfuls of brandy, made what he called his Vegeto-Mineral Water, which he used for lotions. His cerate of Saturn was made by melting 4 oz. of wax in 11 oz. of olive oil, and incorporating with this 6 lbs. of vegeto-mineral water (containing 4 oz. of extract of Saturn). A cataplasm was made by gently boiling the vegeto-mineral water with crumb of bread. A pomatum wasprepared by combining 4 oz. of the extract with a cerate composed of 8 oz. of wax in 18 oz. of rose ointment. This was made stronger or milder as the case might need. There was another pomatum made with the extract of Saturn, sulphur, and alum, for the treatment of itch; and several plasters for rheumatic complaints. Goulard gave full details of the various uses of these applications in inflammations, bruises, wounds, abscesses, erysipelas, ophthalmia, ulcers, cancers, whitlows, tetters, piles, itch, and other complaints. His own experience was supported by that of other practitioners.

In giving the results of his experience thus freely and completely, Goulard was aware of the sacrifice he was making. “I flatter myself,” he says, “that the world is in some measure indebted to me for publishing this medicine, which, if concealed in my own breast, might have turned out much more to my private emolument”; at the same time he did not object to reap some profit from his investigations, if this could be done. At the end of the English translation of his book, a copy of a document is printed addressed to his fellow student of fifty years before, Mr. G. Arnaud, practising as a surgeon in London, engaging to supply to him, and to him only, a sufficient quantity of extract of Saturn made by himself, to be distributed by the said Mr. Arnaud, or by those commissioned by him, over all the dominions of his British Majesty.

Karl Wilhelm Scheele is the most famous of pharmacists, and has few equals in scientific history. He was the seventh child of a merchant at Stralsund,then in the possession of Sweden, and was born on December 9th, 1742. He had a fair education and at school was diligent and apt in acquiring knowledge. If he was born with a gift, if his genius was anything more than an immense capacity for taking pains, this aptness was the faculty which distinguished Scheele from other men. He made thousands of experiments and never forgot what he had learned from any one of them; he read such scientific books as he could get, and never needed to refer to them again. His friend Retsius, a pharmacist like himself as a young man, but subsequently Director of the Museum of Lund, has recorded Scheele’s remarkable power in this respect. “When he was at Malmö,” he writes (this was when Scheele was about twenty-four years of age), “he bought as many books as his small pay enabled him to procure. He would read these once or twice, and would then remember all that interested him, and never consulted them again.”

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