PARACELSUS: THE REFORMER OF MEDICINE.
BY EDWARD BERDOE, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.E., &c.
Read at the Sixty-first Meeting of the Browning Society,
Friday, October 26, 1888.
LET us go back in thought to the middle of the fourteenth century, which saw the birth of the period known as the Renaissance or Revival of Learning, and which preceded the dawn of the Reformation. The early part of the century was the glacial period of European thought, all real intellect was enchained in "thrilling regions of thickribbed ice." The religious condition of Europe at this time is familiar to every student of history. It is with science we have to deal this evening. For nearly two thousand years the philosophy of Aristotle had reigned supreme over all Europe. Hallam tells us that "what the doctors of the Middle Ages had been in theology, that was Aristotle in all physical and speculative science, and the Church admitted him into an alliance of dependency for her own service.” From the domination of this system, which kept the human mind in bondage, there seemed no escape. Men had grown to love their thraldom. But this philosophical deity was not the real Aristotle, but Aristotle converted to Christianity and dressed in a monk's frock. The world had worshipped the sage as a Hebrew, then as a Moslem, now as a Christian and a pedant. Knowledge in the schools "revolved like a squirrel in a cage;" henceforth, after two thousand years of turning about upon itself, it was to progress.
If religious thought was restricted and controlled, science was bound hand and foot and hidden in darkest dungeon. Pietro of Abano, the greatest philosopher and physician of the preceding century, was so successful in curing diseases, so skilful a builder and astronomer, that he was held to be a wizard, and condemned to be