At last came Paracelsus, who was believed to have discovered the elixir of life, and who is the very prince of charlatans. He delivered a course of lectures on the theory and practice of physic at the University of Basle, which he commenced, by burning the works of Galen and Avicenna in the presence of his auditory. He assured his hearers that his shoe-latchets had more knowledge than both these illustrious authors put together: that all the academies in the world had not so much experience as his beard; and that the hair on the back of his neck was more learned than the whole tribe of authors. It was fitting that a person of such splendid pretensions should have a magnificent name. He, therefore, called himself PHILIPPUS AUREOLUS THEOPHRASTUS PARACELCUS BOMBAST VON HOHENHEIM. He was a great chemist, and, like other chemists, he was a little too apt to carry into other sciences “the smoke and tarnish of the furnace.” He conceived that the elements of the living system were the same as those of his laboratory, and that sulphur, salt, and quicksilver were the constituents of organised bodies. He taught that these constituents were combined by chemical operations: that their relations were governed by Archeus, a demon, who performed the part of alchemist in the stomach, who separated the poisonous from the nutritive part of the food, and who communicated the tincture by which the food became capable of assimilation: that this governor of the stomach, this _spiritus vitæ_, this astral body of man, was the immediate cause of all diseases and the chief agent in their cure: that each member of the body had its peculiar stomach, by which the work of secretion was effected: that diseases were produced by certain influences, of which there were five in particular, viz. _ens estrale_, _ens veneni_, _ens naturale_, _ens spirituale_, and _ens deale_; that when the Archeus was sick, putrescence was occasioned, and that either _localiter_ or _emunctorialiter_, &c. &c.