MODERN MEDICINE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4825, 4 May 1925, Page 3

MODERN MEDICINE.

CABKEH-OF.ITS FOIiMJBK.

LIFE OF ADVERSITY. The name of Paracelsus is one that continually crops up in literature to mystify'the average reader; Browning. of course, made him lhe subject of a poem, but that poem, tnough just to the reputation : of its subject, is somewhat, -obscure, and not at all popular.• The story of Paracelsus, the true father of modern medicine, can be more simply told. Like many an- ; other pioneer, Paracelsus was the victim‘of virulent biographers, who "tried to blast his memory in storms ' of hatred qnd jealousy. He was represented as a strolling charlatan who devoted his life to the pursuit ot the philosopher’s stone, a bibulous braggart, uneducated, quarrelsome, pretentious, and disreputable. But. he was not at all 'a necromancer. •Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim was. born at romantic Einsiefl- ■ eln, near the Lake of Constance, on November 10, 1493. His father was of, noble origin, and of some celebrity for his scientific attainments. Bombast„was a family name, and had nothing to connect it with its modern meaning. It was customary among the learned of the time, to Latinisa their names, and Theophrastus changed Hohenheim into Paracelsus, . by which he.became famous throughput the world. - f No. sooner had he left college than ._ he devoted nine years to travelling about Europe, increasing his scien-tific-lore. The universities seemed to him blinded by a web of superstition and, mysticism, so he made the world his university, and his travels, were marked by records of wondrous cure:. . He it was who discovered the heal7, big .power in metals, zinc ointment, preparations, of iron, antimony, mer- ' cury, and lead. . He it was also who . . gave to an ungrateful world laud- . anum, Gregory powders, and many _ other remedies of the present day. j His knowledge was. based upon a . . doctrine of the ancients that all matter is composed of . three basic ele- , ments—fire, water, aud salt, Accordto the fashion of the time, Paracelsus . gave them symbolic names—sulphur, -mercury, and salt —but the meaning is the same, inflammability, fluidity, and--solidity. He maintained that most,. sicknesses arc simply caused by a. breakdown( or else by a superfluity of one of the basic substances, - and can be cured either oy supplying . the deficiency or by building up the other substances until a balance is ..obtained. . .In. this connection it is interesting to note a theory lately propounded about cancer which ascribes it to a breakdown of certain salt :»• the laxly, and proposes to cure it by treatment with’ .those same salts. This is the adoption of one of the chief theories of .Paracelsus, who may be regarded as. the father of -homeopathy. It is, indeed, a wonderful thing that modern science; imbued as they are with scepticism about all medieval lore, taught, to ridicule everything with the faintest savour of occultism, began to read-Paracelsus some thirty or forty years ago, and gleaned from him much neglected knowledge of incalculable value to mankind. But, during his lifetime, his remedies were laughed at, his cures as- . - bribed to some intervention of the - Devil; His refusal to join the close corporation of doctors and take an : oath of secrecy so. enraged his fellowpractitioners that they prevented him from publishing many of his . books and'drove him out of one town after another. For two- years he was a professor at Basle University, but his knowledge and cures made him so many enemies that he was eventually ’ forced to flee from threats of imprisonment. And yet. ten years after his death, his doctrines, were being taught at Basle. ■ -After this experience he resumed his " wandering, - sometimes settling down for months, only to be hounded ' out again by the ignorant practitioners around him. Most of his writings were published after his death, but those which he did contrive to print iurthei enraged the profession of which he was so shining a light. His cures, however,, had made him celebrated throughout Europe, and ’ all sorts and conditions of men appealed to him after their own physicians had admitted failure; He contrived to- keep body and soui together, -but he was sometimes so -poor that he could not afford decent clothes. On one occasion he was re-fused-bermisßion to practice at Innesbruck on the ground that a man in rags'could not be. a: respetcablo ( doctor. By the end of the. folio wing year, however, he had published his most famous work, ‘’The Greater Surgery,” nineteen editions of which- appeared before the end of the sixteenth century;. ‘ ’ He suffered many disappointments from the, ingratitude of rich people. From the poor: he would take no fee, but from his illustrious patients he expectedtfsums in proportion to the - value of hie cures. These, however, were often, refused him, on one occasion because his remedies had relieved so quickly that the regular physicians claimed the cure as their own. The two or three years before the death of Paracelsus were more peaceful. His fame was too great to allow his enemies to harm him, but a greater- enemy was at hand. An insidious disease had bQen set up by the fumes

of the various deadly pbisows he dis- - tilled, and on September221,4 1 , 1541, he died at Salzburg, where, according to his own request, he was buried in the ; . poorest part of the city. To this day . we may see poor people praying besidd his tomb in the porch of the church of St. Sabastian, and when • cholera threatened Salzburg in 1830 crowds of . humble folk repaired thither imploring his intercession, which was bo successful that, though the scourge raged for months in Germany and Austria, Salzburg remained mysteriously immune.—“Jolm o’ London” ’’