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Paracelsus  n.  Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus (originally Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, also called Theophrastus Paracelsus and Theophrastus von Hohenheim). Born at Maria-Einsiedeln, in the Canton of Schwyz, Switzerland, Dec. 17 (or 10 Nov.), 1493: died at Salzburg, Sept. 23 (or 24), 1541. A celebrated German-Swiss physician, reformer of therapeutics, iatrochemist, and alchemist. He attended school in a small lead-mining district where his father, William Bombast von Hohenheim, was a physician and teacher of alchemy. The family originally came from Würtemberg, where the noble family of Bombastus was in possession of the ancestral castle of Hohenheim near Stuttgart until 1409. He entered the University of Basel at the age of sixteen, where he adopted the name Paracelsus, after Celsius, a noted Roman physician. But he left without a degree, first going to Wurtzburg to study under Joannes Trithemius, Abbot of Sponheim (1462-1516), a famous astrologer and alchemist, who initiated him into the mysteries of alchemy. He then spent many years in travel and intercourse with distinguished scholars, studied and practiced medicine and surgery, and at one point attended the Diet of Worms. He was appointed to the office of city physician of Basel, which also made him a lecturer on medicine at Basel about 1526, where, through the publisher Johan Frobenius he made friends with the scholar Erasmus; and there he fulminated against the medical pseudo-science of his day, and against the blind adherence to ancient medical authorities such as Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna, which was still the prevalent philosophy of medicine in the sixteenth century. But soon, in 1528, he was driven from the city by the medical corporations, whose methods he had severely criticized. He found refuge with friends, and traveled and practiced medicine, but could not find a publisher willing to print his books. He preached frequently the need for experimentation in medicine. He is important in the history of medicine chiefly on account of the impetus which he gave to the development of pharmaceutical chemistry. He was also the author of a visionary and theosophic system of philosophy. The first collective edition of his works appeared at Basel in 1589-91. Among the many legends concerning him is that concerning his long sword, which he obtained while serving as barber-surgeon during the Neapolitan wars. It was rumored that in the hilt of the sword he kept a familiar or small demon; some thought he carried the elixer of life in the sword. He is buried in the cemetary of the Hospital of St. Sebastian in Salzburg.; "The apothecaries, too, were enraged against this iconoclast (Paracelsus). For had he not, as official town physician, demanded the right to inspect their stocks and rule over their prescriptions which he denounced as "foul broths"? These apothecaries had grown fat on the barbarous prescriptions of the local doctors. "The physician's duty is to heal the sick, not to enrich the apothecaries", he had warned them, and refused to send his patients to them to have the prescriptions compounded. He made his own medicines instead, and gave them free to his patients.... Then they hatched a plot and before long Basel had lost Paracelsus, ostensibly because of the meanness of a wealthy citizen. Paracelsus had sued Canon Lichtenfels for failure to pay him one hundred guldens promised for a cure. The patient had offered only six guldens, and the fiery Paracelsus, when the court deliberately handed in a verdict against him, rebuked it in such terms that his life was in imminent danger. In the dead of night, he was persuaded by his friends to leave secretly the city where he had hurled defiance at the pseudo-medicos of the world." " Although the theories of Paracelsus as contrasted with the Galeno-Arabic system indicate no advance, inasmuch as they ignore entirely the study of anatomy, still his reputation as a reformer of therapeutics is justified in that he broke new paths in the science. He may be taken as the founder of modern materia medica, and pioneer of scientific chemistry, since before his time medical science received no assistance from alchemy. To Paracelsus is due the use of mercury for syphilis as well as a number of other metallic remedies, probably a result of his studies in Schwaz, and partly his acquaintance with the quicksilver works in Idria."






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"Paracelsus" Quotes from Famous Books



... inopportune moment possible. Man may suffer physical injury, though there are no grounds for the assertions of Pliny that the menstrual blood is so potent for evil that it will, by a mere touch, rust iron, render a tree sterile, make dogs mad, etc., or that of Paracelsus that "of it the devil makes spiders, fleas, caterpillars, and all the other insects that people ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... pathology, therapeutic, etc., was not worth the sand strewn over the prescriptions. She declared that in the treatment of internal maladies medical science has made no progress since Galen's time, and our most renowned professional celebrities are no wiser than Paracelsus. Our medicines, according to her opinion, were either baneful poisons, or of no higher sanative power, at the best, than the waters of Lourdes. She also was afflicted with bodily pain at times, but never yet had she submitted to any professional treatment. No physician had ever entered ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... Evil One is a stupendous force for his chosen people," agreed Don Diego. "That is widely known in Europe to-day when Paracelsus with infernal magic of the mind makes cures which belong by every right to the ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan

... means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents, and I continued to read with the greatest avidity. When I returned home my first care was to procure the whole works of this author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few besides myself. I have described myself as always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature. In spite of the intense labour ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... the English attribute of solid practical sense, that had saved him from running utterly wild in fanciful and visionary speculations. As it is, he has been occasionally[470] classed among the so-called Theosophists, such as Paracelsus and Jacob Behmen. His exuberant imagination delighted in subjects which, since his time, have been acknowledged to be closed to all efforts of human reason, and have been generally abandoned to the dreams of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... Jews and Christians The belief regarding comets especially harmful as a source of superstitious terror Its transmission through the Middle Ages Its culmination under Pope Calixtus III Beginnings of scepticism—Copernicus, Paracelsus, Scaliger Firmness of theologians, Catholic and Protestant, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... scattered and contradictory sources. John Webster, in his Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, contrary to the usual candour and fairness of his judgments, speaks slightingly of Erastus. There was, however, a sufficient reason for this. Erastus had shown up the empiricism of Webster's idol Paracelsus, and was in great disfavour with the writers ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... pleasure in life; of losing for a few moments the dreadful consciousness of being an outcast; of losing for a moment the remembrance of happy days long ago: that's the greatest torment of all, Willis. Don't blame me if I drink; it's the elixir vitae for me just as much as for Paracelsus." And he turned the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... immortality to the subtlest and most delicate effects of painting, he seemed to them rather the sorcerer or the magician, possessed of curious secrets and a hidden knowledge, living in a world of which he alone possessed the key. What his philosophy seems to have been most like is that of Paracelsus or Cardan; and much of the spirit of the older alchemy still hangs about it, with its confidence in short cuts and odd byways to knowledge. To him philosophy was to be something giving strange swiftness and double sight, divining ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... Professor Dowden has indeed proved, in copious and minute detail, what was already obvious to every student who knew even such ordinary Elizabethan books as Lyly's 'Euphues' and Phil Holland's 'Pliny,' and the speculations of such earlier writers as Paracelsus. Bacon and Shakespeare, like other Elizabethans, accepted the popular science of their period, and decorated their pages with queer ideas about beasts, and stones, and plants; which were mere folklore. A sensible friend of my own was staggered, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... Paracelsus, like every Initiate, was acquainted with it, and Jacob Boehme, the "nursling of the Nirmanakayas,"[224] knew that it ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... of his poetry is struck in 'Paracelsus', published in 1835, in his twenty-third year, and, with the exception of 'Pauline' published in 1833, the earliest of his compositions: Paracelsus says (and he who knows Browning knows it to ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... to have received in return a beautiful but empty purse. The mystic science which besides gold sought for the omnipotent philosopher's stone, is a late northern growth, which had its rise in the theories of Paracelsus and others. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... ancient alchemists, and on the blunders and impertinent assumptions of the modern chemists, with whose writings and names it is fair to acknowledge he seemed well acquainted. He quoted the authorities of Roger and Lord Bacon, Paracelsus, Boyle, Boerhaave, Woolfe, and others, to justify his pursuits. As to the term philosopher's stone, he alleged that it was a mere figure, to deceive the vulgar. He appeared also to give full credit to the silly story about Dee's assistant, Kelly, finding some of the powder of projection in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various

... of Germany, has published some interesting volumes recently, on "Paracelsus," "White and Black Magic," and "Among the Rosicrucians," which I have had no time to examine. A valuable essay from Dr. Hartmann is on file for publication in the JOURNAL, in which he compares ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various

... and would necessarily lead, to follies and fancies enough, as long as the phenomena of nature were not carefully studied, and her laws scientifically investigated; and all the dreams of Paracelsus or Van Helmont, Cardan or Crollius, Baptista Porta or Behmen, are but the natural and pardonable errors of minds which, while they felt deeply the sanctity and mystery of Nature, had no Baconian philosophy to tell them what Nature actually was, and what she actually said. But their idea ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... imagined affinity. For the pale decadence of New England had somewhat watered her good old Revolutionary blood too, and she was inclined to think under glass and to live underdone—when there were no Indians to shoot! She would have joyed to venture "Paracelsus" on him, and some lengthy rhymed discourses; and she fondly turned leaves and leaves of her pet doggerel analytics. "Pippa Passes" and others she had to skip, from discreet motives—pages which he would have doubtless stayed awake at; but she chose a poem at length. This was ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... scanned by sympathetic eyes? How many of the pioneers in the past centuries lie under a heap of calumny, because none has tried to understand, none has tried to realise, the nature of their work? Men like Paracelsus, Cagliostro, and many another whose name I might mention, who are crying out, as it were, for research, and thought, and labor on mystical and occult lines. There again I have good hope that some really ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant

... never saw.[360] When he finally escaped from the dungeons of S. Angelo in 1539, a luminous appearance like an aureole settled on his head, and stayed there for the rest of his life.[361] These facts are related in the true spirit of Jerome Cardan, Paracelsus, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Sir Thomas Browne. Cellini doubtless believed in them; but they warn us to be cautious in accepting what he says about his exploits, since imagination and self-conceit could so ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... the sky above the martyred St. Lieven. The four negro heads, the Woman Taken in Adultery, a Susanna (less concerned about her predicament than any we have encountered), a curious and powerful portrait of Theophrastus Paracelsus (Browning's hero), with a dozen others, make a goodly showing for the Antwerp master. Otho Vaenius (Octave Van Veen), one of the teachers of Rubens, is hung here. There are nearly a dozen Van Dycks, of prime ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... wonderful books back there in the "stack" ... the works of Paracelsus, who whispered me that wisdom was to be found more in the vagabond bye-ways of life than in the ordered and regulated highways. That the true knowledge was to be garnered from knocking about with vagrants, gipsies, carriers ... from corners in wayside ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... always with fruitful results. The Englishman, William Gilbert (1540-1603) published, in 1600, his De Arte Magnetica, and laid the foundations of the modern study of electricity and magnetism. A German-Swiss by the name of Hohenheim, but who Latinized his name to Paracelsus (1493-1541), and who became a professor in the medical faculty at the University of Basle, in 1526 broke with mediaeval traditions by being one of the first university scholars to refuse to lecture in Latin. He ridiculed the medical theories of Hippocrates (p. 197) and Galen (p. ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... and learned much of the great centres of other countries. Here came all the Basel magnates and printers. And here, a few years later on, came that bizarre personage who was for a very brief time Basel's "town physician," the Paracelsus Theophrastus Bombastus to whom we owe our word bombastic. Holbein was on a visit to England during the latter's short tenure of office, when the combined scholarship and poverty of Oporinus made him the hack of Paracelsus and the victim of ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue

... this original edition bring twenty-five guineas under the hammer a few years ago. "Pauline" was not reprinted till the issue of the six-volume edition of Mr. Browning's works, in 1869. It was followed by the more ambitious "Paracelsus," a striking attempt to fill a mediaeval outline with a compact body of modern thought; but in spite of the lovely lyric, "Over the sea our galleys went," and in spite of other beauties, the public did not heed the book, and it had no success except with a very small circle. It must be remembered ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... But in you, it is different—it is, in you, a virtue. When Prometheus had recounted a long list of sorrows to be endured by Io, and declared at last that he was [Greek: medepo en prooimiois],[1] poor Io burst out crying. And when the author of 'Paracelsus' and the 'Bells and Pomegranates' says that he is only 'going to begin' we may well (to take 'the opposite idea,' as you write) rejoice and clap our hands. Yet I believe that, whatever you may have done, you will do what is greater. It ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... earlier book on the twig than the 'Testament du Frere Basil Valentin,' a holy man who flourished (the twig) about 1413; but whose treatise is possibly apocryphal. According to Basil Valentin, the twig was regarded with awe by ignorant labouring men, which is still true. Paracelsus, though he has a reputation for magical daring, thought the use of the twig 'uncertain and unlawful'; and Agricola, in his 'De Re Metallica' (1546) expresses a good deal of scepticism about the use of the rod in mining. A traveller of 1554 found that the wand was not used—and this ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... to what itself is unenthusiastic, nor will he ever have disciples who has not himself impulsive zeal enough to be a disciple. Great wits are allied to madness only inasmuch as they are possessed and carried away by their demon, While talent keeps him, as Paracelsus did, securely prisoned in the pommel of his sword. To the eye of genius, the veil of the spiritual world is ever rent asunder that it may perceive the ministers of good and evil who throng continually around it. No man of mere ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... earliest times. Since the Christian era we may class among theosophists such sects as Neo-Platonists, the Hesychasts of the Greek Church, the Mystics of mediaeval times, and, in later times, the disciples of Paracelsus, Thalhauser, Bohme, Swedenborg and others. Recently a small sect has arisen, which has taken the name of Theosophists. Its leader was an English gentleman who had become fascinated with the doctrine of Buddhism. Taking a few of his followers ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... [52] Paracelsus says on this subject: "It may happen that the soul of persons who have died perhaps fifty years ago may appear to us in a dream, and if it speaks to us we should pay special attention to what it says, ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... aside by true science,' remarked the taller officer. 'Even old Sir Thomas Browne of Norwich, who is ever ready to plead the cause of the ancients, can find nothing to say in favour of it. From Trismegistus downwards through Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, Raymond Lullius, Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, and the rest, there is not one who has left more than a cloud ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... nor Nepenthe," remarked he; "but I have learned many new secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of them—a recipe that an Indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own, that were as old as Paracelsus. Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinless conscience. That I cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that Goethe's "Homunculus," suggested to the master partly by reading of Paracelsus and partly by Sterne's mediation, is in some characteristics of his being dependent directly on Sterne's creation. In a meeting of the "Gesellschaft fr deutsche Litteratur," November, 1896, Brandl expressed ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... the vulgar dictates of unrefined reason, agreeing for the most part in their several models with their present undoubted successors in the academy of modern Bedlam, whose merits and principles I shall further examine in due place. Of this kind were Epicurus, Diogenes, Apollonius, Lucretius, Paracelsus, Des Cartes, and others, who, if they were now in the world, tied fast and separate from their followers, would in this our undistinguishing age incur manifest danger of phlebotomy, and whips, and chains, and dark chambers, and straw. For what man in the natural state or course of thinking ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... brevity, a retrospective glance must not be directed beyond the fifteenth century, when the arch priest of "modern quackery" made his appearance upon the medical stage. In the year 1493, Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus de Hohenheim, was ushered into existence, and at a very early age announced his discovery, that the recognised principles of medical science were erroneous, and that in him alone was vested "the art divine, to heal each lurking ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... by the modern world. Alchemy, astrology, geomancy furnished her speech with allusions blank to my ignorance; which she most gently and politely enlightened when I confessed. I learned that the Green Lion of Paracelsus was not a beast, but a recipe for making gold; that Salamandar's Feather was better known today as asbestos; and that the Emerald Table was by no means an article of furniture. I give these examples merely ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... they are totally distinct. The generous poetess felt nothing but the true originality of the poet. "This vivid writing!" she exclaimed,—"this power which is felt!... Our great poet, Mr. Browning, author of 'Paracelsus,' &c., is enthusiastic in his admiration of the rhythm." Mr. Ingram, after referring to "Lady Geraldine," cleverly points out another source from which Poe may have caught an impulse. In 1843, Albert Pike, the half-Greek, half-frontiersman, poet ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe

... general nervine stimulant because the volatile aromatic virtues are not dispelled by heat. Formerly, a spirit of balm, combined with lemon peel, nutmeg, and angelica-root, enjoyed a great reputation as a restorative cordial under the name of Carmelite water. Paracelsus thought so highly of balm that he believed it would completely revivify a man, as primum ens melissoe. The London Dispensatory of 1696 said: "The essence of balm given in Canary wine every morning will ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... medical books, you will find sympathetic magic invoked on every page. Take, for example, the famous vulnerary ointment attributed to Paracelsus. For this there were a variety of receipts, including usually human fat, the fat of either a bull, a wild boar, or a bear, powdered earthworms, the usnia, or mossy growth on the weathered skull of a hanged criminal, and other materials equally unpleasant—the whole prepared under ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... is that of the Ancient Magi and the Initiates of all ages; as a philosophy, we may find its principles in the school of Alexandria and the theories of Pythagoras; as a science, we must inquire for its processes of Paracelsus, Nicholas Flamel, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... theology and philosophy are not opposed sciences, but that reason has to make clear the truths given by authority and revelation. But in his attempt to draw still closer the realms of faith and knowledge he approaches more nearly to the mysticism of Eckhart, Paracelsus and Boehme. Our existence depends on the fact that we are cognized by God (cogitor ergo cogito et sum). All self-consciousness is at the same time God-consciousness; our knowledge is never mere scientia, it is invariably ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... nature, the Melanesian hero went to Night (conceived of as a person) and begged his assistance. Night (Qong) received Qat (the hero) kindly, darkened his eyes, gave him sleep, and, in twelve hours or so, crept up from the horizon and sent the sun crawling to the west.(7) In the same spirit Paracelsus is said to have attributed night, not to the absence of the sun, but to the apparition of certain stars which radiate darkness. It is extraordinary that a myth like the Melanesian should occur in Brazil. There ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... Greeks, we have among other things an account of the doctrine of the Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle; in treating the middle ages, Professor Schaller speaks of the Scholastics, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Giordano Bruno, and Paracelsus. One of the most interesting parts of the whole is that on the poetic view of nature among the Hindoos, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Germans, and Italians, the historical statement being every where illustrated by copious quotations ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... Paracelsus calls the knocks pulsatio mortuorum, in his fragment on 'Souls of the Dead,' and thinks that the sounds predict misfortune, a very common belief. {140b} Lavaterus says, that such disturbances, in unfinished houses are a ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... of Messina, Julius Caesar, Porphyry, the Emperor Julian, who re-established the oath of fire abolished by Constantine the Apostate, Merlin the enchanter, child of a Sylph and a nun daughter of Charlemagne; Saint Thomas Aquinas, Paracelsus and, but ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... and Agrippa. Paracelsus, like Cardan, believed in an intense light infinitely superior to bestial reasoning and calls to mind certain philosophy of intuition of the present day. He too believed himself a magician and physician, and effected cures by the application of astrology to therapeutics. ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet

... it was," said the innocent marine. "Major Flushfire," continued he, once more upon his legs, "may I again entreat the honour of your attention. Dr Thompson has just proved by a quotation from a Greek author, Virgil or Paracelsus, I am not certain which, that the entrance of the night air into a hot room is highly injurious, and in— in—and all that. You understand me perfectly—would it be asking too much to have ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... her eyes, and she said, 'Oh, that is good and great; I shall get much out of him; I had always feared he was impossible.' And 'Paracelsus,' too, stirred her; but when I recited the thrilling fragment, 'Prospice,' on to that closing ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor

... import, and he who practised these arts was in league with Satan. Thus were regarded such men as Lully, Roger Bacon, the Abbot Tritheim, and (perhaps best known of all, at least to all readers of Browning) Bombastes Paracelsus, the contemporary of Faust, born at Einsiedeln, between Brunnen and the lake of Zuerich, in ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... Sub-Prior, "but, by my Holy Order, I know no longer what to say!— My pulse beats temperately—my hand is cool—I am fasting from everything but sin, and possessed of my ordinary faculties—Either some fiend is permitted to bewilder me, or the tales of Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and others who treat of occult philosophy, are not without foundation.—At the crook of the glen? I could have desired to avoid a second meeting, but I am on the service of the Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... her faculties, considered in that light. It was her business, her duty—the thing she came into the world to do—and she did it: she unbent her mind, afterwards, over a book!' And so the lover of poetry and Browning, after winding-up his faculties over 'Comus' or 'Paracelsus,' over 'Julius Caesar' or 'Strafford,' may afterwards, if he is so minded, unbend himself over the 'Origin of Species,' or that still more fascinating record which tells us how little curly worms, only give them time enough, ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell

... phantom of what has been most earth-stained on earth, to make itself apparent to our senses—is a very ancient though obsolete theory, upon which I will hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the power would be supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean from an experiment which Paracelsus describes as not difficult, and which the author of the Curiosities of Literature cites as credible:—A flower perishes; you burn it. Whatever were the elements of that flower while it lived are gone, dispersed, you know not whither; you ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... and interpret fact. Such brave men as Pope Gerbert, Roger Bacon, Galileo, even Kepler, did not lead happy lives; some of them found themselves in prison. All the medieval sages—even Albertus Magnus- -were stigmatised as magicians. One wonders that more of them did not imitate poor Paracelsus, who, unable to get a hearing for his coarse common sense, took—vain and sensual—to drinking the laudanum which he himself had discovered, and vaunted as a priceless boon to men; and died as the fool dieth, in spite of all his wisdom. For the ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... climbing up a precipice of thought, and then kicking away the ladder by which he climbed. Dr Dowden has with singular success readjusted the steps, so that readers may follow the poet's climb. Those who are not daunted by the Paracelsus and Sordello chapter, where the subject requires some close and patient attention, will find vigorous narrative and pellucid exposition interwoven in such a way as to keep them in intimate and constantly closer touch with the "biography ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... Ruggieri, her astrologer, to obtain information as to the lives of her four children from a celebrated female seer, secretly brought there by Nostradamus (chief among the physicians of that great sixteenth century) who practised, like the Ruggieri, the Cardans, Paracelsus, and others, the occult sciences. This woman, whose name and life have eluded history, foretold one year as ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... the beginning of the sixteenth century that the St. Vitus's dance was made the subject of medical research, and stripped of its unhallowed character as a work of demons. This was effected by Paracelsus, that mighty but, as yet, scarcely comprehended reformer of medicine, whose aim it was to withdraw diseases from the pale of miraculous interpositions and saintly influences, and explain their causes upon principles deduced ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... Saxon Rhyme-Chronicles, the poems of Minnesingers and Mastersingers, and Ships of Fools, and Reynard Foxes, and Death-Dances, and Lamentations of Damned Souls. My study since then has been in German chemistry from its renaissance in Paracelsus, and physical science, including both medicine and the evolution of life. Shall I give you a few dozen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... traditionalism which Christian opinion has been constrained to follow. There is not the slightest reason for believing that the Books of Samuel were written by Samuel any more than that the Odyssey was written by Ulysses, or the Aeneid by Aeneas, or Bruce's Address by Bruce, or Paracelsus by Paracelsus, or St. Simeon Stylites by Simeon himself. Even in Bible books we do not hold that the Book of Esther was written by Esther, or the Book of Ruth by Ruth, or the Book of Job by Job, or the Books of Timothy by Timothy. The fact that Samuel's name is given to the book proves nothing as ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... not there?" you will ask. Her pretence will hold the better for it, no doubt, and Caspar will report concerning her. And if she pleases my lord well, who knows but he may give her a pair of watches to hang at her ears, or a box that Paracelsus himself could not open without the secret as well as the key? I have heard of both such. They say my lord hath twenty cartloads of quite as wonderful things in that vault he calls his workshop. Hast thou never marked the huge cabinet of black inlaid with silver, that stands by the wall—fitter ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... calls to my mind my old acquaintance, Herr Doctor Paracelsus Von Munsterberg, who, when I was a boy, came to our town "fresh from his healing triumphs at the Courts of Europe," as his handbills ran, "not to make money, but to confer on suffering mankind the priceless boon of health; to make the sick well, and ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... beneath him; and saw how the setting sun had changed them allto gold, by an alchymy more cunning than his own. He saw the world beneath his feet; and said in his heart, that he alone was wise. Alas! he read more willingly in the book of Paracelsus, than in the book of Nature; and, believing that 'where reason hath experience, faith hath no mind,' would fain have made unto himself a child, not as Nature teaches us, but as the Philosopher taught,—a poor homunculus, in a glass bottle. And ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... them music, and provided them with sturdy companions to dance with. Their endurance was marvelous. Plater speaks of a woman in Basle whom he saw, that danced for a month. In Strasburg many of them ate nothing for days and nights until their mania subsided. Paracelsus, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, was the first to make a study of this disease. He outlined the severest treatment for it, and boasted that he cured many of the victims. Hecker conjectures that probably the wild revels of St. John's day, 1374, gave rise to this mental plague, which ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... is, and he will not humble his authority to prove it. His tenet is always singular and aloof from the vulgar as he can, from which you must not hope to wrest him. He has an excellent humour for an heretic, and in these days made the first Arminian. He prefers Ramus before Aristotle, and Paracelsus before Galen,[22] [and whosoever with most paradox is commended.] He much pities the world that has no more insight in his parts, when he is too well discovered even to this very thought. A flatterer is a dunce ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... foundation of an accurate knowledge of the structure of the human body and demonstrated how its functions should be studied intelligently—with which advances, as illustrating this period, may be associated the names of Paracelsus, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... diachylon and gum (c. G. cum gummi), of saffron and vinegar, defensive plaster, plaster of Paracelsus, blistering plaster, diapalma plaster, compound laudanum plaster, melilot plaster. The term "emplastrum Paracelsi", so the librarian of the Surgeon-General's Office informs me, is not given as such in the older medical dictionaries, and was probably not a current term; but ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... always been closely associated. Indeed, the greatest name in the history of pharmacy is also what is probably the greatest name in the history of magic—the reference, of course, being to PARACELSUS (1493-1541). Until PARACELSUS, partly by his vigorous invective and partly by his remarkable cures of various diseases, demolished the old school of medicine, no one dared contest the authority of GALEN (130-circa ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... Gilbert's revolutionary views concerning the earth as a magnet, it should be remembered that numberless theories to explain the action of the electric needle had been advanced. Columbus and Paracelsus, for example, believed that the magnet was attracted by some point in the heavens, such as a magnetic star. Gilbert himself tells of some of the beliefs that had been held by his predecessors, many of whom he declares "wilfully falsify." One of his first steps ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... notice that, from the state of physical science at the period when Van Helmont, Paracelsus, and others began to penetrate into its recesses, it was an unknown, obscure, and ill-defined region, and did not permit those who laboured in it to give that precise and accurate account of their discoveries which the progress of reasoning experimentally and from analysis has enabled the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... Himalayan Mahatmas themselves from among the class—in Tibet, a considerable one as to number—of natural mystics. The only exceptions have been in the cases of Western men like Fludd, Thomas Vaughan, Paracelsus, Pico di Mirandolo, Count St. Germain, &c., whose temperament affinity to this celestial science, more or less forced the distant Adepts to come into personal relations with them, and enabled them to get such small (or large) proportion of the whole truth as was possible ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... the end of the fifteenth century the therapeutic effects of the human soul by the mutual influence which stars and men have on each other. This theory comes to much more important development in the writings of the physician Paracelsus. One individual by the power of his effort can influence the will of another individual, can fight with it, and suppress it; and all through energies which are analogous to the magnetic power which binds stars ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... that poem the movement and problem of the spirit of man had all but quenched his interest in natural scenery. Nature is only introduced as a background, almost a scenic background for the players, who are the passions, thoughts, and aspirations of the intellectual life of Paracelsus. It is only at the beginning of Part II. that we touch ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... fancy herself a second Browning. She had never yet enjoyed the bliss of having her own idea of herself confirmed by independent evidence. Her soul thrilled as Lord Mallow poured forth his praises; talking of "The Book and the Ring," and "Paracelsus," and a great deal more, of which he knew very little, and seeing in the expression of Lady Mabel's eyes and mouth that he was saying exactly the right thing, and ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... have kept a small devil prisoner in the pommel of his sword. He favored metallic substances for medicines, while Galen preferred herbs. His full name was Philippus Aure'olus Theophrastus Paracelsus, but his ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... Agrippa was born in 1486, at Cologne, and was the contemporary of Paracelsus. Agrippa was the master of Wierus. He was Town Advocate at Metz and secretary to the Emperor Maximilian. Imprisoned for a year at Brussels, on the charge of magic, and ceaselessly calumniated after his death. See Plancey's "Dict. Infern.," ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... or the counterpart of Alchemy, becomes both profitable and helpful. Says Paracelsus: "The true use of chemistry is not to make gold, but to prepare medicines." He admits four elements—the STAR, the ROOT, the ELEMENT and the SPERM. These elements were composed of the three principles, SIDERIC SALT, SULPHUR, and MERCURY. Mercury, or spirit, sulphur, or oil, and salt, and the passive ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... emphasises the fact that the exertion of power in the intelligence, or the acquisition of knowledge, is useless without the inspiration of love, just as love is waste without power. Paracelsus sums up the matter when ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... written against the quackery of Paracelsus, by Leonard Doldius, a Nurnberg physician, and translated into Latin and augmented, by Andreas Libavius, doctor and physician of Rotenburg, alludes to the same story, and gives the Jew a new name nowhere else met with. After having ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... had quite a library of occult books, from which I endeavoured to glean a little knowledge, and great rubbish most of them were. Raymond Lully, Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, and Van Helmont; they were all there, in French, German, Latin, and English. The Alchemists had two obsessions: one was the discovery of the Elixir of Life, by the aid of which you could live forever; the other that of the Philosopher's Stone, which had the property of transmuting everything it ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... Ilkhans, I. 391-393, and Q.R. p. 194.) Bernier mentions wandering Jogis who had the art of preparing mercury so admirably that one or two grains taken every morning restored the body to perfect health (II. 130). The Mercurius Vitae of Paracelsus, which, according to him, renewed youth, was composed chiefly of mercury and antimony. (Opera, II. 20.) Sulphur and mercury, combined under different conditions and proportions, were regarded by the Alchemists both of East and West as the origin of all the metals. Quicksilver ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... not until the beginning of the sixteenth century that the St. Vitus' dance was made the subject of medical research, and stripped of its unhallowed character as a work of demons. This was effected by Paracelsus, that mighty, but as yet scarcely comprehended, reformer of medicine, whose aim it was to withdraw diseases from the pale of miraculous interpositions and saintly influences, and explain their causes upon principles deduced ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... influence on Browning's art has been one often discussed. There are many traces of Shelleyan music and idea in his early poems "Pauline," "Paracelsus," and "Sordello," but no marked nor lasting impression was made upon Browning's development as a poet by Shelley. Upon Browning's personal development Shelley exerted a short-lived though somewhat intense influence. ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... wild beast's, and the most hideously false smile you ever saw in a human face. What his history is, nobody knows. The people at the medical school call him the most extraordinary experimental chemist living. His ideas astonish the Professors themselves. The students have named him 'The new Paracelsus.' ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... spirit of foolish speculation altogether, in no merely transcendental mood, did the glorious Greek of old fancy the human soul to be essentially a harmony. And if we grant that theory of Paracelsus and Campanella, that every man has four souls within him; then can we account for those banded sounds with silver links, those quartettes of melody, that sometimes sit and sing within us, as if our souls were baronial halls, and our ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... Yet, though he accepted us at our face value, and began to talk of his strange discoveries there was none of the old familiar prating about matrix and flux, elixir, magisterium, magnum opus, the mastery and the quintessence, those alternate names for the philosopher's stone which Paracelsus, Simon Forman, Jerome Cardan, and the other mediaeval worthies indulged in. This experience at least was as up-to-date as the Curies, Becquerel, Ramsay, and ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... grief,—Oedipus and Antigone, Iphigenia, Perseus, Prometheus, King Lear, Samson Agonistes, Job, and David in his penitential psalm. And there are the Victors in the yet deeper strivings of the soul—in its inner battles and spiritual conquests—Milton's Adam, Paracelsus, Dante, the soul in The Palace of Art, Abt Vogler, Isaiah, Teufelsdroeckh, Paul. To read of such men and women is to be thrilled by the Titanic possibilities ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... purpose, and the general increase of medical knowledge, caused attention to be given to the utilization of chemical preparations as medicines. As early as the 15th century the alchemist Basil Valentine had suggested this application, but the great exponent of this doctrine was Paracelsus, who set up a new definition: "The true use of chemistry is not to make gold but to prepare medicines." This relation of chemistry to medicine prevailed until the 17th century, and what in the history of chemistry is termed the iatrochemical period (see MEDICINE) was mainly fruitful in increasing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various



Words linked to "Paracelsus" :   doctor, Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus, Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim, physician, md, medico



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