fâcheux d'un autre côté qu'il y en ait mêlé un grand nombre de frivoles et de fausses, etc."*

Another celebrity of the period, also a contemporary, made bold to deal with the doctrines of Paracelsus in a manner less moderate and more critical. His name was Thomas Erastus, a medical savant and a writer of no mean ability. He devoted four large quarto volumes to the examination of the writings and doctrines and sophistries of Paracelsus, controverting him at every point. The works of Erastus were published at Baden, in 1572.2

The man of science must ever recognize, in the study of disease: first, a cause; second, nature; third, effects. The cause is the presence of peccant or morbific matters in the organism, disturbing the solids and the fluids of the organism. Second, nature, in her conservative capacity as a force which excites the so-called disease-disturbance in its endeavor to protect the organism against matters inimical to its life and health and to eliminate them from the organism. To her action against morbific causes are due the phenomena which are recognized as the symptoms of disease, but which are really the reaction of nature against the causes of disease. Third, the effects are subnormal or abnormal changes in the organs and tissues which inevitably follow this action in the warfare of nature against morbificants.

1 Ibidem, p. 819.

'Le Clerc's Histoire de la Médecine, p. 820.

This philosophy of drug-action and morbific action do not, of course, apply to immune medication, nor to antisepsis. All know the effects of medicaments upon the organism are similar to those of agents that are foreign to the economy. Their effects are determined by the reaction of nature against them, in the absence of which their effect would be nil. Such agents produce no such phenomena upon a dead organism. One cannot produce emesis with ipecac or lobelia; purge with calomel or rhubarb; cause enuresis with nitre or cantharis; nor blister with cantharis, or actual cautery, upon a dead person. These are significant truths which the great philosophers of medicine have understood perfectly, but which Bombastes Theophrastus and his modern apologists and imitators do not and will not understand, preferring to use his erratic genius to exploit self and mislead followers. What is called disease is no enemy to life, be it observed; it preserves life and health. "Without disease life could not subsist," said the late distinguished Virchow.'

Paracelsus lived a chequered career, vulgar, erratic, opinionated, and combative to the last. He did not die a natural death, but was cut off in the prime of life. During a heated discussion with a colleague, the latter, being the stronger and equally pugnacious party, threw him out of a window, and in the fall he suffered fracture of the base of the skull, and probably instant death.

Address before the Internat. Medical Congress, London, 1888.

His only contribution to medicine was to the materia medica of mercury, sulphur, and salt, without, however, giving any direction for their use, or indicating to what maladies they were applicable. The profession accepted the bequest and have found them excellent remedies for many ailments, thus justifying Cullen's epigram that "A wise man will accept a good remedy which only a fool would devise."

'We know nothing in the annals of literature comparable to the exploits of Paracelsus, but the attempt of the celebrated Jean Jacques Rousseau to orchestrate a piece of music, without the least pretence of possessing a knowledge of musical harmony, but solely from his own imagination, which was, as all know, very great. His score was given to an orchestra to play, to the great amusement of that body, and the auditors. It was laughed down. Rousseau relates this story of himself in his "Confessions."

FIFTH: PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE

IN

CHAPTER V

MEDICINE IN the SixteenTH CENTURY

IN the beginning of the sixteenth century we find the state of learning advancing in all the countries of Europe, and England behind all the others. She had but two universities-Oxford and Cambridge. France had six; Italy sixteen; Germany eight; Spain none. Medicine was a prominent feature in all of them.

Many great and momentous events occurred in this century to distinguish it above all previous centuries, not only in medicine, but also in statecraft, civil and religious liberty. Many great men adorned this century and great progress was made in science and discovery. The Church had been rent in twain; the map of Europe had been changed; the power of the State was again in the ascendant over Church. It could now protect the individual guilty of heresy from being dragged off to Rome, as instanced in the previous century of the learned and pious Wycliff, whose offence consisted in making a translation-the first translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English-an event of greater importance than the