wn. The coarseness and violence of those
days seem incredible to us now; and, indeed, Paracelsus, as he confessed
himself, was, though of gentle blood, rough and unpolished; and utterly,
as one can see from his writings, unable to give and take, to
conciliate--perhaps to pardon. He looked impatiently on these men who
were (not unreasonably) opposing novelties which they could not
understand, as enemies of God, who were balking him in his grand plan for
regenerating science and alleviating the woes of humanity, and he
outraged their prejudices instead of soothing them.

Soon they had their revenge. Ugly stories were whispered about.
Oporinus, the printer, who had lived with him for two years, and who left
him, it is said, because he thought Paracelsus concealed from him
unfairly the secret of making laudanum, told how Paracelsus was neither
more nor less than a sot, who came drunk to his lectures, used to prime
himself with wine before going to his patients, and sat all night in
pothouses swilling with the boors.

Men looked coldly on him--longed to be rid of him. And they soon found
an opportunity. He took in hand some Canon of the city from whom it was
settled beforehand that he was to receive a hundred florins. The priest
found himself cured so suddenly and easily that, by a strange logic, he
refused to pay the money, and went to the magistrates. They supported
him, and compelled Paracelsus to take six florins instead of the hundred.
He spoke his mind fiercely to them. I believe, according to one story,
he drew his long sword on the Canon. His best friends told him he must
leave the place; and within two years, seemingly, after his first triumph
at Basle, he fled from it a wanderer and a beggar.

The rest of his life is a blank. He is said to have recommenced his old
wanderings about Europe, studying the diseases of every country, and
writing his books, which were none of them published till after his
death. His enemies joyfully trampled on the fallen man. He was a "dull
rustic, a monster, an atheist, a quack, a maker of gold, a magician."
When he was drunk, one Wetter, his servant, told Erastus (one of his
enemies) that he used to offer to call up legions of devils to prove his
skill, while Wetter, in abject terror of his spells, entreated him to
leave the fiends alone--that he had sent his book by a fiend to the
spirit of Galen in hell, and challenged him to say which was the better
system, his or Para