A history of chemistry from earliest times to the present day : being also an introduction to the study of the science / by Ernst von Meyer ; translated with the author's sanction by George M'Gowan.

Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A history of chemistry from earliest times to the present day : being also an introduction to the study of the science / by Ernst von Meyer ; translated with the author's sanction by George M'Gowan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    weening estimation in which he held himself helped to make him ridiculous in the eyes of thoughtful physicians. At the root of his iatro-chemical doctrines, which he imagined were grounded upon ample experience, lay the conception already mentioned,—that the operations which go on in the human body are chemical ones, and that the state of health depends upon the composition of the organs and the juices. With respect to the constituents of organic bodies, Paracelsus adhered to Basil Valentine's assumption that the latter were composed of mercury, sulphur, and salt. Indeed, in spite of many contradictions in the details of his theoretical views, this hypothesis forms the foundation of liis whole system.-^ When one of these elements predomi- nates or when it falls below its normal amount, illnesses ensue. This idea is expressed in the most fantastic manner in the writings of this strange man, as the following sentences show:— An increase of the sulphur gives rise to fever and the plague, an increase of mercury to paralysis and depression, and an in- crease of salt to diarrhoea and dropsy. By the elimination of the sulphur, gout results, and by distilling it from one organ into another, delirium, and so on.—However unfounded such opinions are, it is possible to find a certain sense in them ; on the other hand, his utterances upon the relations of the individual organs and the secretions of the human body to the metals and planets, to both of which he ascribes a mystical influence, are quite unintelligible. ISTot less incomprehensible is his assum]ption of a connection between the plague and shooting stars. He designates tartarus as the cause of various illnesses, meaning by this expression precipitates from juices which in the healthy state contain no solid particles. The deposition of concretionary matter, which he may have observed in the affected organs during many diseases (such as gout, stone in the kidneys, and gall-stones), no doubt led him to this partially sound conclusion. The comparison of 1 Medicine rests, according to the confused statement of Paracelsus, upon four pillars, of which chemistry forms one ; the three others are philosophy, astronomy, and virtue.