September 2, 2025 • 26 mins
Dive into the insightful manuscript of Sir William Oslers lectures on the Evolution of Modern Medicine, delivered at Yale University in 1913. As the father of modern clinical medicine, Osler masterfully guides us through the fascinating history of medicine, tracing its journey from ancient practices to contemporary advancements, including the significant rise of preventive medicine. Written for a general audience, this classic work is both captivating and enlightening, making it a must-read for anyone interested in the realms of healthcare, medicine, and history. - Summary by Cao Yuqing
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section nineteen of the Evolution of Modern Medicine. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Rita Buttros. The Evolution of Modern Medicine by
Sir William Osler, Section nineteen, The Renaissance and the Rise
(00:25):
of Anatomy and Physiology. Paracelsus Paracelsus is dergeiss der stets vernant.
He roused men against the dogmatism of the schools, and
he stimulated enormously the practical study of chemistry. These are
his great merits, against which must be placed a flood
(00:46):
of hermetical and transcendental medicine, some his own, some foisted
in his name, the influence of which is still with us.
With what judgment, ye judge, it shall be judged to
you again is the verdict of three centuries on Paracelsus.
In return for unmeasured abuse of his predecessors and contemporaries,
(01:09):
he has been held up to obloquy as the arch
charlatan of history. We have taken a cheap estimate of
him from Fuller and Bacon and from a host of
scurrilous scribblers who debased or perverted his writings. Fuller picked
him out as exemplifying the drunken quack, whose body was
(01:29):
a sea, wherein the tide of drunkenness was ever ebbing
and flowing. He boasted that shortly he would order Luther
and the Pope, as well as he had done Gallon
and Hippocrates. He was never seen to pray, and seldom
came to church. He was not only skilled in natural
magic the utmost bounds whereof border on the suburbs of hell,
(01:53):
but is charge to converse constantly with familiars. Guilty he
was of all vices, but wants Francis Bacon too, says
many hard things of him to the mystics. On the
other hand, he is Paracelsus, the Great, the divine, the
most supreme of the Christian magi, whose writings are too
(02:14):
precious for science, the monarch of secrets, who has discovered
the universal medicine. This is illustrated in Browning's well known
poem Paracelsus, published when he was only twenty one, than
which there is no more pleasant picture and literature of
the man and of his aspirations. His was a searching
(02:36):
and impetuous soul that sought to win from nature some
startling secret, a tincture of force, to flush old age
with youth, or breed gold, or imprison moonbeams till they
change to opal shafts. At the same time, with that
capacity for self deception which characterizes the true mystic, he
(02:58):
sought to cast life on a darkling race. Save for
that doubt, I stood at first where all aspire at
last to stand. The secret of the world was mine.
I knew. I felt perception, unexpressed, uncomprehended by our narrow thought,
but somehow felt and known in every shift and change
(03:20):
in the spirit, nay, in every pore of the body,
even what God is, what we are, what life is?
Robert Browning, Paracelsus closing speech. Much has been done of
late to clear up his story and his character. Professor
Suhoff of Leipzig has made an exhaustive bibliographical study of
(03:44):
his writings. There have been recent monographs by Julius Hartmann
and Professors Franz and Karl Struntz, and a sympathetic summary
of his life and writings has been published by the
late Miss Stoddart. Indeed, there is at present a cult
of Paracelsus. The hermetic and alchemical writings are available in English,
(04:07):
in the addition of A. E. Waite, London, eighteen ninety four.
The main facts of his life you can find in
all the biographies. Suffice it here to say that he
was born at Einsiedeln, near Zurich in fourteen ninety three,
the son of a physician, from whom he appears to
have had his early training both in medicine and in chemistry,
(04:31):
under the famous abbot and alchemist Trithemisov Wurzburg. He studied
chemistry and occultism. After working in the mines at Schwatz,
he began his wanderings, during which he professes to have
visited nearly all the countries in Europe, and to have
reached India and China. Returning to Germany, he began a
(04:53):
triumphal tour of practice through the German cities, always in
opposition to the medical faculty and constantly in trouble. He
undoubtedly performed many important cures and was thought to have
found the supreme secret of alchemistry in the pommel of
his sword. He was believed to carry a familiar spirit.
(05:16):
So dominant was his reputation that in fifteen twenty seven
he was called to the chair of physic in the
University of Basel. Embroiled in quarrels after his first year,
he was forced to leave secretly and again began his
wanderings through German cities, working, quarreling, curing, and dying prematurely
(05:37):
at Salzburg in fifteen forty one. One of the most
tragic figures in the history of medicine, 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
(05:59):
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
(06:23):
must have startled the old teachers and practitioners by his
novel methods. On June fiveth fifteen twenty seven, he attached
a program of his lectures to the blackboard of the university,
inviting all to come to them. It began by greeting
all students of the art of healing. He proclaimed its
(06:45):
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 whether nature
pointed through research into nature, where he himself had discovered
(07:06):
and had verified by prolonged experiment and experience. He was
ready to oppose obedience to old lights, as if there
were oracles from which one did not dare to differ.
Illustrious doctors might be graduated from books, but books made
not a single physician. Neither graduation, nor fluency, nor the
(07:28):
knowledge of old languages, nor the reading of many books
made a physician, but the knowledge of things themselves and
their properties. The business of a doctor was to know
the different kinds of sicknesses, their causes, their symptoms, and
their right remedies. This he would teach, for he had
won this knowledge through experience, the greatest teacher, and with
(07:51):
much toil. He would teach it as he had learned it,
and his lectures would be founded on works which he
had composed concerning inward and external treatment, physic and surgery.
Shortly afterwards, at the feast of Saint John, the students
had a bonfire in front of the university. Paracelsus came out,
(08:13):
holding in his hands the Bible of Medicine, Avicenna's cannon,
which he flung into the flames, saying, into Saint John's fire,
so that all misfortune may go into the air with
the smoke. It was, as he explained afterwards, a symbolic act.
What has perished must go to the fire. It is
(08:34):
no longer fit for use. What is true in living
that the fire cannot burn. 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 Rasus, Montagnana, messuus, you gentlemen of Paris, montpet Germany, Cologne, Vienna,
(09:03):
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. This first great revolt against the
Slavish authority of the schools had little immediate effect, largely
(09:27):
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
(09:48):
make neither gold nor silver. Its use is to make
the supreme sciences and to direct them against disease. He
recognized three basic substances sulfur, mercury, and salt, which were
the necessary ingredients of all bodies, organic or inorganic. They
were the basis of the three principles out of which
(10:11):
the Archaeus, the spirit of Nature, formed all bodies. He
made important discoveries in chemistry zinc, the various compounds of mercury, calomel,
flowers of sulfur, among others, and he was a strong
advocate of the use of preparations of iron and antimony
(10:32):
in practical pharmacy. He has perhaps had a greater reputation
for the introduction of a tincture of opium labdinum or laudanum,
with which he affected miraculous cures, and the use of
which he had probably learned in the East. Through Paracelsus,
a great stimulus was given to the study of chemistry
(10:53):
and pharmacy, and he is the first of the modern iotrochemists,
in contradistinction to galen medicines, which were largely derived from
the vegetable Kingdom. From this time on we find in
the literature references to spagaric medicines, and a Spagorist was
a Paracelsian who regarded chemistry as the basis of all
(11:15):
medical knowledge. One cannot speak very warmly of the practical
medical writings of Paracelsus Gout, which may be taken as
the disease upon which he had the greatest reputation, is
very badly described. And yet he has one or two
fruitful ideas singularly mixed with medieval astrology. But he has
(11:37):
here and there very happy in sights, as where he
remarks nec praeter synovium loquum, alium olumpu dagra occupat in
the tract on phlebotomy, I see nothing modern, and here
again he is everywhere dominated by astrological ideas sapiens dominatur astris.
(11:59):
As a antagonist of occult philosophy, Paracelsus has had a
more enduring reputation than as a physician. In estimating his position,
there is the great difficulty referred to by Sutthoff in
determining which of the extant treatises are genuine. In the
two volumes issued in English by Weight in eighteen ninety four,
(12:21):
there is much that is difficult to read and to
appreciate from our modern standpoint. In the book concerning Long Life,
he confesses that his method and practice will not be
intelligible to common persons, and that he writes only for
those whose intelligence is above the average, to those fond
of transcendental studies, they appeal and are perhaps intelligible. Everywhere
(12:46):
one comes across shrewd remarks, which prove that Paracelsus had
a keen belief in the all controlling powers of nature
and of man's capacity to make those powers operate for
his own goods. The wise man rules nature, not nature.
The wise man. The difference between the saint and the
(13:07):
madjus is that the one operates by means of God
and the other by means of nature. He had great
faith in nature and the light of nature, holding that
man obtains from nature according as he believes. His theory
of the three principles appears to have controlled his conception
of everything relating to man spiritually, mentally, and bodily, and
(13:32):
his threefold genera of disease corresponded in some mysterious way
with the three primary substances salt, sulfur, and mercury. How
far he was a believer in astrology, charms, and devination,
it is not easy to say. From many of the
writings in his collected works, one would gather, as I
(13:53):
have already quoted, that he was a strong believer. On
the other hand, in the Perimurum, he says, stars control
nothing in us, suggest nothing, incline to nothing, own nothing.
They are free from us, and we are free from
them Stoddart, page one eighty five. The Archaeus, not the stars,
(14:16):
controls man's destiny. Good fortune comes from ability, and ability
comes from the spirit Archaeus. No one has held more
firmly the dualistic conception of the healing art. There are
two kinds of doctors, those who heal miraculously and those
who heal through medicine. Only he who believes can work miracles.
(14:40):
The physician has to accomplish that which God would have
done miraculously had there been faith enough. In the sick
man Stoddart, page one ninety four, he had the hippocratic
conception of the viz medicatrix naturae. No one keener since
the days of the Greeks. Man is his own doctor
(15:01):
and finds proper healing herbs in his own garden. The
physician is in ourselves, in our own nature, are all
things that we need. And speaking of wounds with singular prescience,
he says that the treatment should be defensive, so that
no contingency from without could hinder nature in her work Stoddart,
(15:22):
page two thirteen. Paracelsus expresses the healing powers of nature
by the word mummia, which he regarded as a sort
of magnetic influence or force, and he believed that any
one possessing this could arrest or heal disease in others.
As the lily breaks forth in invisible perfume, so healing
(15:44):
influences may pass from an invisible body upon these views
of Paracelsus was based the theory of this sympathetic cure
of disease, which had an extraordinary vogue in the late
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which is not without its
modern counterpart. In the next century. In Van Helmond, we
(16:07):
meet with the Archaeus everywhere, presiding, controlling and regulating the
animate and inanimate bodies, working this time through agents local ferments.
The Rosicrucians had their direct inspiration from his writings, and
such mystics as the English Rosicrucian Flood were strong Paracelsians.
(16:30):
The doctrine of contraries, drawn from the old Greek philosophy,
upon which a good deal of the treatment of Hippocrates
and Gallon was based dryness expelled by moisture, cold by heat,
et cetera, was opposed by Paracelsus in favor of a
theory of similars, upon which the practice of homeopathya is based.
(16:52):
This really arose from the primitive beliefs to which I
have already referred as leading to the use of eyebright
in diseases of the eye and cyclomen in diseases of
the ear. Because of its resemblance to that part, and
the Egyptian organithotherapy had the same basis. Spleen would cure
(17:13):
spleen heart, heart, et cetera. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
these doctrines of sympathies and antipathies were much in vogue.
A Scotchman Sylvester Ratree edited in the Theatrum Sympatheticum all
the writings upon the sympathies and antipathies of Man with animal,
(17:36):
vegetable and mineral substances, and the whole art of physics
was based on this principle. Upon this theory of mummia
or magnetic force, the sympathetic cure of disease was based.
The weapons salve, the sympathetic ointment, and the famous powder
of sympathy were the instruments through which it acted. The
(17:58):
magnetic cure of wounds became the vogue. Van Helmut adopted
these views in his famous Treaties to Magnetica Vulnerum Curatione,
in which he asserted that cures were wrought through magnetic influence.
How close they came to modern views of wound infection
may be judged from the following Upon the solution of
(18:22):
unity in any part the ambient air repleated with various
evaporations or apparreeas of mixed bodies, especially such as are
then suffering. The act of putrefaction violently invadeth the part,
and thereupon impresseth an exotic miasm or noxious diathesis, which
(18:44):
disposeth the blood, successively arriving at the wound to putrefaction.
By the intervention of fermentation. With his magnetic sympathy, Van
Helmont expressed clearly the doctrine of immunity and the cure
of disease by immune sarah. For he who has once
recovered from that disease hath not only obtained a pure
(19:08):
balsamical blood, whereby for the future he is rendered free
from any recidivation of the same evil, but also infallibly
cures the same affection in his neighbor, and by the
mysterious power of magnetism, transplants that balsam and conserving quality
into the blood of another. He was rash enough to
(19:30):
go further and say that the cures effected by the
relics of the saints were also due to the same cause,
a statement which led to a great discussion with the
theologians and to van Helmont's arrest for heresy and small
wonder when he makes such bold statements as let the
divine inquire only concerning God. The naturalist concerning nature and
(19:57):
God in the production of miracles, does for them the
most part, walk hand in hand with nature. That wandering
genius Sir Kenelm Digby did much to popularize this method
of treatment by his lecture on the Powder of Sympathy.
His powder was composed of copperas alone or mixed with
(20:18):
gum tragacanth. He regarded the cure as effected through the
subtle influence of the sympathetic spirits, or, as Heimore says,
by atomical energy wrought at a distance, and the remedy
could be applied to the wound itself, or to a
cloth soaked in the blood or secretions, or to the
(20:40):
weapon that caused the wound. One factor leading to success
may have been that in the directions which Digby gave
for treating the wound in the celebrated case of James Howell,
for instance, it was to be let alone and kept clean.
The practice is alluded to very frequently by the poet.
(21:00):
In the Lay of the Last Minstrel, we find the following,
but she has tain the broken lance and washed it
from the clotted gore, and salved the splinter ore. And
o'er William of Delraine in trance, whene'er she turned it
round and round, twisted as if she'd galled his wound.
(21:21):
Then to her maidens she did say that he should
be hull man and sound. And in Dryden's tempest, Ariel says,
anoint the sword which pierced him, with the weapon, salve,
and rapid clothes from air till I have time to
visit him again. From van Helmont comes the famous story
(21:43):
of the new nose that dropped off in sympathy with
the dead arm from which it was taken, and the
source of the famous lines of Houdibras. As I have
not seen the original story quoted of late years, it
may be worth while to give it. A certain inhabitant
of Bruxels, in a combat, had his nose mowed off,
(22:05):
addressed himself to Taglia Causas, a famous Georgian living in Bononia,
that he might procure a new one, And when he
feared the incision of his own arm, he hired a
porter to admit it out of whose arm having first
given the reward agreed upon at length, he digged a
(22:26):
new nose. About thirteen months after his return to his
own country, on a sudden the ingrafted nose grew cold, putrefied,
and within few days drops off. To those of his
friends that were curious in the exploration of the cause
of this unexpected misfortune, it was discovered that the porter
(22:47):
expired nearer about the same punctilio of time, wherein the
nose grew frigid and cadaverous. There are at Bruxels yet
surviving some of good repute that were eye witnesses of
these occurrences. Equally in the history of science and of medicine,
(23:08):
fifteen forty two is a starred year, marked by a
revolution in our knowledge, alike of macrocosm and microcosm. In Frauenberg,
the town physician and a canon, now nearing the palmist
limit and his end, had sent to the press the
studies of a lifetime, their revolutionibus orbium coalstium. It was
(23:33):
no new thought, no new demonstration, that Copernicus thus gave
to his generation. Centuries before men of the keenest scientific
minds from Pythagoras on had worked out a heliocentric theory,
fully promulgated by Aristarchus and very generally accepted by the
(23:54):
brilliant investigators of the Alexandrian school, But in a long
interval lapped in Oriental lethargy, Man had been content to
acknowledge that the heavens declare the glory of God, and
that the firmament sheweth his handiwork. There had been great
astronomers before Copernicus. In the fifteenth century Nicholas av Cuza
(24:16):
and Reggiomontanus had hinted at the heliocentric theory, but fifteen
twelve marx and epoch in the history of science since
for all time, Copernicus put the problem in a way
that compelled acquiescence. Nor did Copernicus announce a truth perfect
(24:37):
and complete, not to be modified. But there were many
contradictions and lycune which the work of subsequent observers had
to reconcile and fill up. For long years. Copernicus had
brooded over the great thoughts which his careful observation had compelled.
We can imagine the touching scene in the little town
(24:59):
when his his friend Ossiander brought the first copy of
the precious volume hot from the press, a well enough
printed book. Already on his deathbed, stricken with a long illness,
the old man must have had doubts how his work
would be received, though years before Pope Clement the seventh
(25:19):
had sent him encouraging words. Fortunately, death saved him from
the rending, which is the portion of so many innovators
and discoverers. His great contemporary, reformer, Luther, expressed the view
of the day when he said, the fool will turn
topsy turvy the whole art of astronomy. But the Bible
(25:41):
says that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not
the earth. The scholarly Melanchthon, himself, an astronomer, thought the
book so godless that he recommended its suppression Daniman Grundrus.
The Church was too much involved in the Ptolemaic system
(26:02):
to accept any change, and it was not until eighteen
twenty two that the works of Copernicus were removed from
the index. End of section nineteen
Section nineteen of the Evolution of Modern Medicine. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Rita Buttros. The Evolution of Modern Medicine by
Sir William Osler, Section nineteen, The Renaissance and the Rise
(00:25):
of Anatomy and Physiology. Paracelsus Paracelsus is dergeiss der stets vernant.
He roused men against the dogmatism of the schools, and
he stimulated enormously the practical study of chemistry. These are
his great merits, against which must be placed a flood
(00:46):
of hermetical and transcendental medicine, some his own, some foisted
in his name, the influence of which is still with us.
With what judgment, ye judge, it shall be judged to
you again is the verdict of three centuries on Paracelsus.
In return for unmeasured abuse of his predecessors and contemporaries,
(01:09):
he has been held up to obloquy as the arch
charlatan of history. We have taken a cheap estimate of
him from Fuller and Bacon and from a host of
scurrilous scribblers who debased or perverted his writings. Fuller picked
him out as exemplifying the drunken quack, whose body was
(01:29):
a sea, wherein the tide of drunkenness was ever ebbing
and flowing. He boasted that shortly he would order Luther
and the Pope, as well as he had done Gallon
and Hippocrates. He was never seen to pray, and seldom
came to church. He was not only skilled in natural
magic the utmost bounds whereof border on the suburbs of hell,
(01:53):
but is charge to converse constantly with familiars. Guilty he
was of all vices, but wants Francis Bacon too, says
many hard things of him to the mystics. On the
other hand, he is Paracelsus, the Great, the divine, the
most supreme of the Christian magi, whose writings are too
(02:14):
precious for science, the monarch of secrets, who has discovered
the universal medicine. This is illustrated in Browning's well known
poem Paracelsus, published when he was only twenty one, than
which there is no more pleasant picture and literature of
the man and of his aspirations. His was a searching
(02:36):
and impetuous soul that sought to win from nature some
startling secret, a tincture of force, to flush old age
with youth, or breed gold, or imprison moonbeams till they
change to opal shafts. At the same time, with that
capacity for self deception which characterizes the true mystic, he
(02:58):
sought to cast life on a darkling race. Save for
that doubt, I stood at first where all aspire at
last to stand. The secret of the world was mine.
I knew. I felt perception, unexpressed, uncomprehended by our narrow thought,
but somehow felt and known in every shift and change
(03:20):
in the spirit, nay, in every pore of the body,
even what God is, what we are, what life is?
Robert Browning, Paracelsus closing speech. Much has been done of
late to clear up his story and his character. Professor
Suhoff of Leipzig has made an exhaustive bibliographical study of
(03:44):
his writings. There have been recent monographs by Julius Hartmann
and Professors Franz and Karl Struntz, and a sympathetic summary
of his life and writings has been published by the
late Miss Stoddart. Indeed, there is at present a cult
of Paracelsus. The hermetic and alchemical writings are available in English,
(04:07):
in the addition of A. E. Waite, London, eighteen ninety four.
The main facts of his life you can find in
all the biographies. Suffice it here to say that he
was born at Einsiedeln, near Zurich in fourteen ninety three,
the son of a physician, from whom he appears to
have had his early training both in medicine and in chemistry,
(04:31):
under the famous abbot and alchemist Trithemisov Wurzburg. He studied
chemistry and occultism. After working in the mines at Schwatz,
he began his wanderings, during which he professes to have
visited nearly all the countries in Europe, and to have
reached India and China. Returning to Germany, he began a
(04:53):
triumphal tour of practice through the German cities, always in
opposition to the medical faculty and constantly in trouble. He
undoubtedly performed many important cures and was thought to have
found the supreme secret of alchemistry in the pommel of
his sword. He was believed to carry a familiar spirit.
(05:16):
So dominant was his reputation that in fifteen twenty seven
he was called to the chair of physic in the
University of Basel. Embroiled in quarrels after his first year,
he was forced to leave secretly and again began his
wanderings through German cities, working, quarreling, curing, and dying prematurely
(05:37):
at Salzburg in fifteen forty one. One of the most
tragic figures in the history of medicine, 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
(05:59):
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
(06:23):
must have startled the old teachers and practitioners by his
novel methods. On June fiveth fifteen twenty seven, he attached
a program of his lectures to the blackboard of the university,
inviting all to come to them. It began by greeting
all students of the art of healing. He proclaimed its
(06:45):
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 whether nature
pointed through research into nature, where he himself had discovered
(07:06):
and had verified by prolonged experiment and experience. He was
ready to oppose obedience to old lights, as if there
were oracles from which one did not dare to differ.
Illustrious doctors might be graduated from books, but books made
not a single physician. Neither graduation, nor fluency, nor the
(07:28):
knowledge of old languages, nor the reading of many books
made a physician, but the knowledge of things themselves and
their properties. The business of a doctor was to know
the different kinds of sicknesses, their causes, their symptoms, and
their right remedies. This he would teach, for he had
won this knowledge through experience, the greatest teacher, and with
(07:51):
much toil. He would teach it as he had learned it,
and his lectures would be founded on works which he
had composed concerning inward and external treatment, physic and surgery.
Shortly afterwards, at the feast of Saint John, the students
had a bonfire in front of the university. Paracelsus came out,
(08:13):
holding in his hands the Bible of Medicine, Avicenna's cannon,
which he flung into the flames, saying, into Saint John's fire,
so that all misfortune may go into the air with
the smoke. It was, as he explained afterwards, a symbolic act.
What has perished must go to the fire. It is
(08:34):
no longer fit for use. What is true in living
that the fire cannot burn. 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 Rasus, Montagnana, messuus, you gentlemen of Paris, montpet Germany, Cologne, Vienna,
(09:03):
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. This first great revolt against the
Slavish authority of the schools had little immediate effect, largely
(09:27):
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
(09:48):
make neither gold nor silver. Its use is to make
the supreme sciences and to direct them against disease. He
recognized three basic substances sulfur, mercury, and salt, which were
the necessary ingredients of all bodies, organic or inorganic. They
were the basis of the three principles out of which
(10:11):
the Archaeus, the spirit of Nature, formed all bodies. He
made important discoveries in chemistry zinc, the various compounds of mercury, calomel,
flowers of sulfur, among others, and he was a strong
advocate of the use of preparations of iron and antimony
(10:32):
in practical pharmacy. He has perhaps had a greater reputation
for the introduction of a tincture of opium labdinum or laudanum,
with which he affected miraculous cures, and the use of
which he had probably learned in the East. Through Paracelsus,
a great stimulus was given to the study of chemistry
(10:53):
and pharmacy, and he is the first of the modern iotrochemists,
in contradistinction to galen medicines, which were largely derived from
the vegetable Kingdom. From this time on we find in
the literature references to spagaric medicines, and a Spagorist was
a Paracelsian who regarded chemistry as the basis of all
(11:15):
medical knowledge. One cannot speak very warmly of the practical
medical writings of Paracelsus Gout, which may be taken as
the disease upon which he had the greatest reputation, is
very badly described. And yet he has one or two
fruitful ideas singularly mixed with medieval astrology. But he has
(11:37):
here and there very happy in sights, as where he
remarks nec praeter synovium loquum, alium olumpu dagra occupat in
the tract on phlebotomy, I see nothing modern, and here
again he is everywhere dominated by astrological ideas sapiens dominatur astris.
(11:59):
As a antagonist of occult philosophy, Paracelsus has had a
more enduring reputation than as a physician. In estimating his position,
there is the great difficulty referred to by Sutthoff in
determining which of the extant treatises are genuine. In the
two volumes issued in English by Weight in eighteen ninety four,
(12:21):
there is much that is difficult to read and to
appreciate from our modern standpoint. In the book concerning Long Life,
he confesses that his method and practice will not be
intelligible to common persons, and that he writes only for
those whose intelligence is above the average, to those fond
of transcendental studies, they appeal and are perhaps intelligible. Everywhere
(12:46):
one comes across shrewd remarks, which prove that Paracelsus had
a keen belief in the all controlling powers of nature
and of man's capacity to make those powers operate for
his own goods. The wise man rules nature, not nature.
The wise man. The difference between the saint and the
(13:07):
madjus is that the one operates by means of God
and the other by means of nature. He had great
faith in nature and the light of nature, holding that
man obtains from nature according as he believes. His theory
of the three principles appears to have controlled his conception
of everything relating to man spiritually, mentally, and bodily, and
(13:32):
his threefold genera of disease corresponded in some mysterious way
with the three primary substances salt, sulfur, and mercury. How
far he was a believer in astrology, charms, and devination,
it is not easy to say. From many of the
writings in his collected works, one would gather, as I
(13:53):
have already quoted, that he was a strong believer. On
the other hand, in the Perimurum, he says, stars control
nothing in us, suggest nothing, incline to nothing, own nothing.
They are free from us, and we are free from
them Stoddart, page one eighty five. The Archaeus, not the stars,
(14:16):
controls man's destiny. Good fortune comes from ability, and ability
comes from the spirit Archaeus. No one has held more
firmly the dualistic conception of the healing art. There are
two kinds of doctors, those who heal miraculously and those
who heal through medicine. Only he who believes can work miracles.
(14:40):
The physician has to accomplish that which God would have
done miraculously had there been faith enough. In the sick
man Stoddart, page one ninety four, he had the hippocratic
conception of the viz medicatrix naturae. No one keener since
the days of the Greeks. Man is his own doctor
(15:01):
and finds proper healing herbs in his own garden. The
physician is in ourselves, in our own nature, are all
things that we need. And speaking of wounds with singular prescience,
he says that the treatment should be defensive, so that
no contingency from without could hinder nature in her work Stoddart,
(15:22):
page two thirteen. Paracelsus expresses the healing powers of nature
by the word mummia, which he regarded as a sort
of magnetic influence or force, and he believed that any
one possessing this could arrest or heal disease in others.
As the lily breaks forth in invisible perfume, so healing
(15:44):
influences may pass from an invisible body upon these views
of Paracelsus was based the theory of this sympathetic cure
of disease, which had an extraordinary vogue in the late
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which is not without its
modern counterpart. In the next century. In Van Helmond, we
(16:07):
meet with the Archaeus everywhere, presiding, controlling and regulating the
animate and inanimate bodies, working this time through agents local ferments.
The Rosicrucians had their direct inspiration from his writings, and
such mystics as the English Rosicrucian Flood were strong Paracelsians.
(16:30):
The doctrine of contraries, drawn from the old Greek philosophy,
upon which a good deal of the treatment of Hippocrates
and Gallon was based dryness expelled by moisture, cold by heat,
et cetera, was opposed by Paracelsus in favor of a
theory of similars, upon which the practice of homeopathya is based.
(16:52):
This really arose from the primitive beliefs to which I
have already referred as leading to the use of eyebright
in diseases of the eye and cyclomen in diseases of
the ear. Because of its resemblance to that part, and
the Egyptian organithotherapy had the same basis. Spleen would cure
(17:13):
spleen heart, heart, et cetera. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
these doctrines of sympathies and antipathies were much in vogue.
A Scotchman Sylvester Ratree edited in the Theatrum Sympatheticum all
the writings upon the sympathies and antipathies of Man with animal,
(17:36):
vegetable and mineral substances, and the whole art of physics
was based on this principle. Upon this theory of mummia
or magnetic force, the sympathetic cure of disease was based.
The weapons salve, the sympathetic ointment, and the famous powder
of sympathy were the instruments through which it acted. The
(17:58):
magnetic cure of wounds became the vogue. Van Helmut adopted
these views in his famous Treaties to Magnetica Vulnerum Curatione,
in which he asserted that cures were wrought through magnetic influence.
How close they came to modern views of wound infection
may be judged from the following Upon the solution of
(18:22):
unity in any part the ambient air repleated with various
evaporations or apparreeas of mixed bodies, especially such as are
then suffering. The act of putrefaction violently invadeth the part,
and thereupon impresseth an exotic miasm or noxious diathesis, which
(18:44):
disposeth the blood, successively arriving at the wound to putrefaction.
By the intervention of fermentation. With his magnetic sympathy, Van
Helmont expressed clearly the doctrine of immunity and the cure
of disease by immune sarah. For he who has once
recovered from that disease hath not only obtained a pure
(19:08):
balsamical blood, whereby for the future he is rendered free
from any recidivation of the same evil, but also infallibly
cures the same affection in his neighbor, and by the
mysterious power of magnetism, transplants that balsam and conserving quality
into the blood of another. He was rash enough to
(19:30):
go further and say that the cures effected by the
relics of the saints were also due to the same cause,
a statement which led to a great discussion with the
theologians and to van Helmont's arrest for heresy and small
wonder when he makes such bold statements as let the
divine inquire only concerning God. The naturalist concerning nature and
(19:57):
God in the production of miracles, does for them the
most part, walk hand in hand with nature. That wandering
genius Sir Kenelm Digby did much to popularize this method
of treatment by his lecture on the Powder of Sympathy.
His powder was composed of copperas alone or mixed with
(20:18):
gum tragacanth. He regarded the cure as effected through the
subtle influence of the sympathetic spirits, or, as Heimore says,
by atomical energy wrought at a distance, and the remedy
could be applied to the wound itself, or to a
cloth soaked in the blood or secretions, or to the
(20:40):
weapon that caused the wound. One factor leading to success
may have been that in the directions which Digby gave
for treating the wound in the celebrated case of James Howell,
for instance, it was to be let alone and kept clean.
The practice is alluded to very frequently by the poet.
(21:00):
In the Lay of the Last Minstrel, we find the following,
but she has tain the broken lance and washed it
from the clotted gore, and salved the splinter ore. And
o'er William of Delraine in trance, whene'er she turned it
round and round, twisted as if she'd galled his wound.
(21:21):
Then to her maidens she did say that he should
be hull man and sound. And in Dryden's tempest, Ariel says,
anoint the sword which pierced him, with the weapon, salve,
and rapid clothes from air till I have time to
visit him again. From van Helmont comes the famous story
(21:43):
of the new nose that dropped off in sympathy with
the dead arm from which it was taken, and the
source of the famous lines of Houdibras. As I have
not seen the original story quoted of late years, it
may be worth while to give it. A certain inhabitant
of Bruxels, in a combat, had his nose mowed off,
(22:05):
addressed himself to Taglia Causas, a famous Georgian living in Bononia,
that he might procure a new one, And when he
feared the incision of his own arm, he hired a
porter to admit it out of whose arm having first
given the reward agreed upon at length, he digged a
(22:26):
new nose. About thirteen months after his return to his
own country, on a sudden the ingrafted nose grew cold, putrefied,
and within few days drops off. To those of his
friends that were curious in the exploration of the cause
of this unexpected misfortune, it was discovered that the porter
(22:47):
expired nearer about the same punctilio of time, wherein the
nose grew frigid and cadaverous. There are at Bruxels yet
surviving some of good repute that were eye witnesses of
these occurrences. Equally in the history of science and of medicine,
(23:08):
fifteen forty two is a starred year, marked by a
revolution in our knowledge, alike of macrocosm and microcosm. In Frauenberg,
the town physician and a canon, now nearing the palmist
limit and his end, had sent to the press the
studies of a lifetime, their revolutionibus orbium coalstium. It was
(23:33):
no new thought, no new demonstration, that Copernicus thus gave
to his generation. Centuries before men of the keenest scientific
minds from Pythagoras on had worked out a heliocentric theory,
fully promulgated by Aristarchus and very generally accepted by the
(23:54):
brilliant investigators of the Alexandrian school, But in a long
interval lapped in Oriental lethargy, Man had been content to
acknowledge that the heavens declare the glory of God, and
that the firmament sheweth his handiwork. There had been great
astronomers before Copernicus. In the fifteenth century Nicholas av Cuza
(24:16):
and Reggiomontanus had hinted at the heliocentric theory, but fifteen
twelve marx and epoch in the history of science since
for all time, Copernicus put the problem in a way
that compelled acquiescence. Nor did Copernicus announce a truth perfect
(24:37):
and complete, not to be modified. But there were many
contradictions and lycune which the work of subsequent observers had
to reconcile and fill up. For long years. Copernicus had
brooded over the great thoughts which his careful observation had compelled.
We can imagine the touching scene in the little town
(24:59):
when his his friend Ossiander brought the first copy of
the precious volume hot from the press, a well enough
printed book. Already on his deathbed, stricken with a long illness,
the old man must have had doubts how his work
would be received, though years before Pope Clement the seventh
(25:19):
had sent him encouraging words. Fortunately, death saved him from
the rending, which is the portion of so many innovators
and discoverers. His great contemporary, reformer, Luther, expressed the view
of the day when he said, the fool will turn
topsy turvy the whole art of astronomy. But the Bible
(25:41):
says that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not
the earth. The scholarly Melanchthon, himself, an astronomer, thought the
book so godless that he recommended its suppression Daniman Grundrus.
The Church was too much involved in the Ptolemaic system
(26:02):
to accept any change, and it was not until eighteen
twenty two that the works of Copernicus were removed from
the index. End of section nineteen
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Charlie is America's hardest working grassroots activist who has your inside scoop on the biggest news of the day and what's really going on behind the headlines. The founder of Turning Point USA and one of social media's most engaged personalities, Charlie is on the front lines of America’s culture war, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of students on over 3,500 college and high school campuses across the country, bringing you your daily dose of clarity in a sea of chaos all from his signature no-holds-barred, unapologetically conservative, freedom-loving point of view. You can also watch Charlie Kirk on Salem News Channel