He gives us some details of the numerous journeys that he made, as was customary with the alchymists of the time, into the mountains of Bohemia, the East, and Sweden, to inspect the mines, to get himself initiated into the mysteries of the eastern adepts, to inspect the wonders of nature, and to view the celebrated diamond mountain, the position of which, however, he unfortunately forgets to specify. In the preface to his Chirurgia Magna, he informs us that he traversed Spain, Portugal, England, Prussia, Poland, and Transylvania; where he not only profited by the information of the medical men with whom he became acquainted, but that he drew much precious information from old women, gipsies, conjurors, and chemists.[144] He spent several years in Hungary; and informs us that at Weissenburg, in Croatia, and in Stockholm, he was taught by several old women to prepare drinks capable of curing ulcers. He is said also to have made a voyage into Egypt, and even into Tartary; and he accompanied the son of the Kan of the Tartars to Constantinople, in order to learn the secret of the philosopher’s stone from Trismogin, who inhabited that capital. This prodigious activity, this constant motion from place to place, left him but little leisure for reading: accordingly he informs us himself, that during the space of ten years he never opened a book, and that his whole library consisted only of six sheets. The inventory of his books, drawn up after his death, confirms this recital; for they consisted only of the Bible, the Concordance to the Bible, the New Testament, and the Commentaries of St. Jerome on the Evangelists. [144] “Hispania, Portugallia, Anglia, Borussia, Lithuania, Polonia, Pannonia, Valachia, Transylvania, Croatia, Illyrico, immo omnibus totius Europæ nationibus peragratis, undeque non solum apud medicos, sed et chirurgos, tonsores, aniculas, magos, chymistas, nobiles ac ignobiles, optima, selectiora ac secretiora, quæ uspiam extarent remedia, inquisivi acriter.”--_Præfatio Chirurgiæ Magnæ._ Opera Paracelsi, tom. iii.