During the two years he lived with him, Operinus declares Paracelsus was almost constantly drunk. He was scarcely sober two hours at a time. He would go to taverns and challenge the peasantry to drink against him. When he had taken a quantity of wine, he would put his finger in his throat and vomit. Then he could start again. And yet Operinus also reports how perpetually he worked in his laboratory. The fire there was always burning, and something was being prepared, “some sublimate or arsenic, some safran of iron, or his marvellous opodeldoch.” Moreover, however drunk he might be he could always dictate, and Operinus says “his ideas were as clear and consecutive as those of the most sober could be.” According to this same letter Paracelsus had been an abstainer until he was 25. He cared nothing for women. Operinus had never known him undress. He would lie down with his sword by his side, and in the night would sometimes spring up and slash at the walls and ceiling. When his clothes got too dirty he would take them off and give them to the first passer, and buy new ones. How he got his money Operinus did not know. At night he often had not an obolus; in the morning he would have a new purse filled with gold. It is not easy to form a fair judgment of Paracelsus from this sketch. Many writers conclude that Operinus was spiteful because Paracelsus would not tell him his secrets. More likely Operinus left his master because his religious sentiments were shocked by him. Paracelsus was evidently a born mocker, and it may be that he took a malicious delight in making his disciple’s flesh creep. Operinus gives an instance of the levity with which his master treated serious subjects. He was sent for one day to see a poor person who was very ill. His first question was whether the patient had taken anything. “He has taken the holy sacrament,” was the reply. “Oh, very well,” said Paracelsus, “if he has another physician he has no need of me.” I think Operinus wrote in good faith, but the stories of the doctor’s drunkenness must have been exaggerated. It is inconceivable that he could have been so constantly drunk, and yet always at work. Operinus, it may be added, returned to Basel and set up as a printer, but failed and died in poverty. Robert Browning’s dramatic poem of “Paracelsus” has been much praised by the admirers of the poet. It was written when Browning was 23, and represents in dramatic form the ambitious aspirations of a youth of genius who believes he has if mission in life; has intellectual confidence in his own powers; and the assurance that it is the Deity who calls him to the work. In some time, His good time, I shall arrive; He guides me.