and his generosity to the poor in the following terms:—
"Conditur hic Philippus Theophrastus, insignis Medicinæ Doctor,
qui dira illa vulnera, lepram, podagram, hydroposim, aliaque insanabilia
contagia mirificu arte sustulit; ac bona sua in pauperes distribuenda
collocandaque honoravit. Anno 1541, die 24 Septembr.
vitam cum morte mutavit."
("Here lies Philippus Theophrastus, the famous Doctor of Medicine, who by his wonderful art cured the worst wounds, leprosy, gout, dropsy, and other diseases deemed incurable and to his honour, shared his possessions with the poor.")
Among the contemporaries of Paracelsus were Luther,
Columbus, and Copernicus. Their names alone are
sufficient to show how the long-suppressed energy of
the human intellect was at that period bursting forth.
These four men were perhaps the greatest emancipators
of the human race from the chains of slavish obedience
to authority in the past thousand years. Paracelsus
was not, so far as is known, a Lutheran Protestant.
But he could not help sympathising with his heroic
countryman. "The enemies of Luther," he wrote, "are
to a great extent fanatics, knaves, bigots, and rogues.
You call me a medical Luther, but you do not intend
to honour me by giving me that name. The enemies
of Luther are those whose kitchen prospects are interfered
with by his reforms. I leave Luther to defend
what he says, as I will defend what I say. That which
you wish for Luther you wish for me; you wish us
both to the fire." There was, indeed, much in common
between these two independent souls.
Columbus landed in the Western world the year before Paracelsus was born. Luther burnt the Pope's Bull at Wittenberg in 1520, and it was this action of his which at the time at least thrilled the German nation more than any other event in the history of
