SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
Plotioe in this camas doss not issoessaray :predate subsequent mists.] Paracekus. By J. M. Stillman. (Open Court Publishing Co. 10s. net.)—Professor Stillman as a chemist writes of Paracelsus with knowledge and sympathy. Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus, was born in 1493. He was the son of a -Swiss physician who migrated from Einsiedeln to Villach in Carinthia. He learned medicine from his father and something of alchemy and metallurgy at the mines worked by the Fuggers of Augsburg in Carinthia arid TyroL He had travelled widely and served in the wars before, in 1526, he appeared at Bale, where lie delighted Erasmus and his friends by cueing the publisher Froben of an illness, and was appointed city physician and university lecturer. Little more than a year later he was driven from the city by the hostility of his fellow-practitioners, who disliked his unorthodox views and were probably jealous of his success. Until his death in 1541 lie wandered from town to town, practising his profession and writing the numerous treatises in which his scientific theories are set forth. He came to be remembered as a charlatan, if not a magician in league with the powers of darkness. He was, in fact, a modern scientist born before his time. Professor Stillman's account of the Paracelsan doctrine is lucid and dis- criminating. Ile thinks that the influence of Paracelsus on ,chemistry was epoch-snaking, because he ridiculed the attempts to make gold and invited chemists to prepare drujas that might be useful to physicians. On the other hand, the author holds that the influence of Paracelaus on modicizie has been overrated.
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