he practical medical writings of
Paracelsus. Gout, which may be taken as the disease upon which he had
the greatest reputation, is very badly described, and yet he has one or
two fruitful ideas singularly mixed with mediaeval astrology; but he
has here and there very happy insights, as where he remarks "nec praeter
synoviam locqum alium ullum podagra occupat."(13) In the tract on
phlebotomy I see nothing modern, and here again he is everywhere
dominated by astrological ideas--"Sapiens dominatur astris."

(13) Geneva ed., 1658, Vol. I, p. 613.

As a protagonist of occult philosophy, Paracelsus has had a more
enduring reputation than as a physician. In estimating his position
there is the great difficulty referred to by Sudhoff in determining
which of the extant treatises are genuine. In the two volumes issued in
English by Waite in 1894, there is much that is difficult to read and
to appreciate from our modern standpoint. In the book "Concerning Long
Life" he confesses that his method and practice will not be intelligible
to common persons and that he writes only for those whose intelligence
is above the average. To those fond of transcendental studies they
appeal and are perhaps intelligible. Everywhere one comes across
shrewd remarks which prove that Paracelsus had a keen belief in the
all-controlling powers of nature and of man's capacity to make those
powers operate for his own good: "the wise man rules Nature, not Nature
the wise man." "The difference between the Saint and the Magus is that
the one operates by means of God, and the other by means of Nature."
He had great faith in nature and the light of nature, holding that man
obtains from nature according as he believes. His theory of the three
principles appears to have controlled his conception of everything
relating to man, spiritually, mentally and bodily; and his threefold
genera of disease corresponded in some mysterious way with the three
primary substances, salt, sulphur and mercury.

How far he was a believer in astrology, charms and divination it is not
easy to say. From many of the writings in his collected works one would
gather, as I have already quoted, that he was a strong believer. On the
other hand, in the "Paramirum," he says: "Stars control nothing in us,
suggest nothing, incline to nothing, own nothing; they are free from
us and we are free from them" (Stoddart, p. 185). The Archaeus, not the
stars, controls man's destiny. "Good fortune