" With abundant confidence in
his own capacity he proclaimed himself the legitimate monarch, the very
Christ of medicine. "You shall follow me," cried he, "you, Avicenna,
Galen, Rhasis, Montagnana, Mesues; you, Gentlemen of Paris, Montpellier,
Germany, Cologne, Vienna, and whomsoever the Rhine and Danube nourish;
you who inhabit the isles of the sea; you, likewise, Dalmatians,
Athenians; thou, Arab; thou, Greek; thou, Jew; all shall follow me, and
the monarchy shall be mine."(12)
(10) And men have oft grown old among their books
To die case hardened in their ignorance.
--Paracelsus, Browning.
(11) Anna M. Stoddart: Life of Paracelsus, London, 1911, pp.
95-96.
(12) Browning's Paracelsus, London, 1835, p. 206 (note).
This first great revolt against the slavish authority of the schools had
little immediate effect, largely on account of the personal vagaries of
the reformer--but it made men think. Paracelsus stirred the pool as had
not been done for fifteen centuries.
Much more important is the relation of Paracelsus to the new chemical
studies, and their relation to practical medicine. Alchemy, he held, "is
to make neither gold nor silver: its use is to make the supreme
sciences and to direct them against disease.
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