(7) Professor Sudhoff: Bibliographia Paracelsica, Berlin, 1894,
1899.
(8) R. Julius Hartmann: Theophrast von Hohenheim, Berlin, 1904;
ditto, Franz Strunz, Leipzig, 1903.
(9) Anna M. Stoddart: The Life of Paracelsus, London, John
Murray, 1911.
Paracelsus is the Luther of medicine, the very incarnation of the spirit
of revolt. At a period when authority was paramount, and men blindly
followed old leaders, when to stray from the beaten track in any field
of knowledge was a damnable heresy, he stood out boldly for independent
study and the right of private judgment. After election to the chair at
Basel he at once introduced a startling novelty by lecturing in German.
He had caught the new spirit and was ready to burst all bonds both in
medicine and in theology. He must have startled the old teachers and
practitioners by his novel methods. "On June 5, 1527, he attached a
programme of his lectures to the black-board of the University inviting
all to come to them. It began by greeting all students of the art of
healing. He proclaimed its lofty and serious nature, a gift of God to
man, and the need of developing it to new importance and to new renown.
This he undertook to do, not retrogressing to the teaching of the
ancients, but progressing whither nature pointed, through research into
nature, where he himself had discovered and had verified by prolonged
experiment and experience.
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