reted, not quite so anomalous
as it seems at first blush. Philosophy was the "gate of medicine,"
whereby the physician entered rightly upon the true course of learning;
astronomy, the study of the stars, was all-important because "they (the
stars) caused disease by their exhalations, as, for instance, the sun by
excessive heat"; alchemy, as he interpreted it, meant the improvement of
natural substances for man's benefit; while virtue in the physician was
necessary since "only the virtuous are permitted to penetrate into the
innermost nature of man and the universe."

All his writings aim to promote progress in medicine, and to hold before
the physician a grand ideal of his profession. In this his views are
wide and far-reaching, based on the relationship which man bears
to nature as a whole; but in his sweeping condemnations he not only
rejected Galenic therapeutics and Galenic anatomy, but condemned
dissections of any kind. He laid the cause of all diseases at the door
of the three mystic elements--salt, sulphur, and mercury. In health he
supposed these to be mingled in the body so as to be indistinguishable;
a slight separation of them produced disease; and death he supposed to
be the result of their complete separation. The spiritual agencies of
diseases, he said, had nothing to do with either angels or devils, but
were the spirits of human beings.

He believed that all food contained poisons, and that the function of
digestion was to separate the poisonous from the nutritious. In the
stomach was an archaeus, or alchemist, whose duty was to make this
separation. In digestive disorders the archaeus failed to do this, and
the poisons thus gaining access to the system were "coagulated" and
deposited in the joints and various other parts of the body. Thus the
deposits in the kidneys and tartar on the teeth were formed; and the
stony deposits of gout were particularly familiar examples of this. All
this is visionary enough, yet it shows at least a groping after rational
explanations of vital phenomena.

Like most others of his time, Paracelsus believed firmly in the doctrine
of "signatures"--a belief that every organ and part of the body had a
corresponding form in nature, whose function was to heal diseases of
the organ it resembled. The vagaries of this peculiar doctrine are too
numerous and complicated for lengthy discussion, and varied greatly from
generation to generation. In general, however, the theory may be sum