their testimony makes way for those who are able to pay for both. He finds he has no reputation among those that know him, and fears he is never like to have, and, therefore, posts up his bills, to see if he can thrive better amongst those who know nothing of him. He keeps his post continually, and will undertake to maintain it against all the plagues of Egypt. He sets up his trade upon a pillar, or the corner of a street-These are his warehouses, where all he has is to be seen, and a great deal more; for he that looks further finds nothing at all." ABSURDITIES OF PARACELSUS, AND VAN HELMONT. Although some of the first chemists were men of sense and learning, yet after that chemistry began to be fashionable and much in vogue, there were some of its professors, who although men of an uncommon turn of genius, were as great enthusiasts, both in the chemical and medical arts, as any other men ever were in religion. They not only pretended to transmute some of the baser metals into gold, contrary to the nature of things-and if they could have succeeded in that impossible work, it would have rendered gold as plentiful, cheap, and less valuable than iron, because it is less fit for instruments and mechanical - but they also pretended infallibly to cure all diseases, by some of their new invented chemical machines;-a thing equally as impossible as the other, and shewed their ignorance of the causes and na uses ture of diseases. As those who are the most ignorant are generally the greatest boasters, we find that none of them were more so, than that vain, boasting, paradoxical enthusiast Paracelsus, who had acquired great riches by curing a certain disease with a mercurial ointment, the knowledge of which secret he is said to have stolen from Jacobus Berengarius, of Caipo, in his travels thither. He was withal so illiterate, that he said philosophy could be taught in no language but high Dutch; but the true reason was, that he neither understood philosophy nor any other language. He also boasted that he was in possession of a nostrum which would prolong man's life to the age of Methusaleh, though he died himself at the age of fortyHe lived in the fifteenth century. The cures he wrought were deemed so surprising in that age, that he was supposed to have recourse to supernatural aid. In a picture of him at Lumley Castle, he is represented in a close black gown, with both hands on a great sword, on whose hilt is inscribed the word Azot. This was the name of his familiar spirit, that he kept imprisoned in the pummel, to consult on emergent occasions. The circumstance is thus alluded to by Butler : seven. Bombastes kept the Devil's Bird Paracelsus was succeeded by his scholar van Helmont, who had much more learning, but was as great an enthusiast, both in the chemical and medical arts as his master, and embraced most of his paradoxical opinions; and, having more technical terms, he frequently used them rather to dazzle and confound the understandings of his readers, than to inform their judgments. By thus giving his writings a mystical air of wisdom, he rendered them obscure, and sometimes unintelligible; consequently, more easily imposed them upon the public and vulgar, as sublime and useful truths. He also vainly boasted that he could cure any fever in four days' time, by sweating the patient with one draught of his famous nostrum, the Præcipitatus Diaphoreticus Paracelsi; and further adds, "that no man can deserve the name of a physician, who cannot cure any fever in four days' time." He, however, admits, that he sometimes added a little theriaca (treacle) and wine to it; which last, he says, " is not only a great cordial, but as a vehicle, is a proper messenger to be sent on such an errand, as it knows the road, is well received wherever it goes, and readily admitted into the most private apartments of the human body." Hence we believe that wine is not only a good natured, but an intelligent being; though it sometimes deprives men of their senses for a time, when they take too much of it: and hence we see also a specimen of our author's method of reasoning and writing. Van Helmont, like his great master, also boasted, that he could cure all inflammatory and other fevers, and even a pleurisy, without either bleeding, vomiting, purging, clysters, or blisters; and he quarrelled a so much with the two last, that he calls clysters beastly remedy," and says that blisters were invented by a wicked spirit, whom he calls Moloz, though Beelzebub might have been as good a name, since Dr. Baynard wittily observed, that he believed he was only a great cantharid. And both Helmont and the Doctor were so far right, that blistering was then, as well as now, much abused; and in truth they are much oftener applied than is either necessary or useful. Thus these two eminent chemists, and too many of their followers, frequently imposed their writings upon the unguarded reader, and themselves upon the vulgar, for men of profound knowledge in the medical art, and as great adepts in chemistry: and being puffed up with the high opinion entertained of their new art, or new medicines, and their own great wisdom, they rejected the philosophical theory of medicine by Galen and Avicenna, then so much in vogue. They were right in doing this, and might have done great service to mankind, if they had not set up their own imaginary chemical theory in its place, which was neither founded upon observations, nature, nor reason, and had no existence but in their own vain imaginations. Thus they supposed a malignity which caused all diseases, as well inflammatory as other fevers, and which was to be forced out of the body by sweating, with their hot therapeutics; they, therefore, attacked all fevers with this chemical ammunition, and attempted to carry them with fire and storm, prescribing the præcipitatus diaphoreticus and sweating regimen, which must have been fatal to many, and no doubt would have been so to many more, if van Helmont had not allowed his patients to dilute the medicine with a thin diet, which rendered the calorific method less fatal. But, as the learned Dr. Friend judiciously remarks, if any did escape after that hot regimen, it was through a fiery trial. Thus the chemists, without any rational theory, or regard to nature, and what she indicated or did ;without duly considering how the morbid matter, which caused the disease, was to be concocted and fitted to be carried off by some critical evacuation; or how to assist nature to bring that crisis on, according to the Hippocratic method;-without considering the benefit of the rational, cooling, antiphlogistic practice of the Arabians-they introduced their sudorific regimen instead; and this regimen was soon after brought into use in England, and most other countries, where it continued to be the practice for many years afterwards, as may be seen by the authors of those times, until the judicious and honest Dr. Sydenham wisely rejected and exploded it, introducing the rational method of Hippocrates and the cooling regimen of the Arabians, which he seems rather to have taken ex ipsa re et ratione from nature and reason, than from the works of the Arabian physicians, with which he appears not to have been acquainted, as he never mentions them. Van Helmont had several other famous nostrums, with which he pretended to perform wonders, as quacks have done in all ages, and as some do now : |