Physiological Introduction or Principles of the Human Body

...are still seen today, and historical documents show the chemical art to be much older. Rather, it is to be believed that Adam was knowledgeable in this art, just as he was of all things. Later, however, the invention of chemistry is most deservedly ascribed to Tubalcain, who is said in Genesis 4, verse 22, to have been a master of bronze and iron, and was imagined by the Greeks as Vulcan. After the Flood, chemistry was propagated by Hermes Trismegistus, the most learned inventor of all sciences, who for this reason is said to have handed down to the Egyptians not so much laws as letters. In favor of this most noble author and patron, the chemical art is still called Hermetic today. From Hermes, it is said to have passed gradually to various others, and finally to Democritus himself as an eminent philosopher, and in the following centuries to have lain hidden among monks, namely: Raymond Lull, Albertus Magnus, Morienus, Roger Bacon, and others. After their sacred exercises, it was treated most honestly by these. Meanwhile, to this Hermetic art, certain principles designated by certain names—namely salt, sulfur, and mercury—were prefixed by Isaac Hollandus, Friar Basilius Valentinus, and Paracelsus, who followed him and called it "Spagyric" by the power of Spagyria the art of dissolving and combining natural bodies. Quercetanus succeeded these with many others down to the present time, but before him Petrus Severinus, as the one who reduced the Paracelsian dogmas, scattered here and there, into the form of an art. He counted far more followers than Paracelsus himself, whence the sect was therefore called "New" and "Severinian." The third schema, finally, will be that of the Modern Atomists, which, although it acquired its first origin in name from Democritus, Epicurus, Empedocles, and many other most noble philosophers—indeed, all of them before Aristotle—is in fact now something far different. For the ancients posited infinite atoms existing from eternity; the moderns, finite ones, produced in time. We submit to Disputation the principles of the human body under this third schema, primarily so that our novices: 1. May have a convenient declaration of those principles upon which modern authors in medicine everywhere rely. 2. May recognize their probability, as with others. And thus, 3. May know how to solidly repel the marks of Atheism, Manichaeism, Quietism, and any kind of Heresy—which are almost daily imputed to Atomists without prior Papal decision—and how to counter the slanders of adversaries that are promiscuously uttered. But because certain things are wont to be objected against the Atomistic sentiment which concern the supernatural order, it has pleased us, for the sake of the erudition of Catholics and approved authors, to adduce responses, which we leave to further theological disquisition, solemnly protesting that we never wish to feel anything that opposes the mysteries, dogmas, or decisions of the Catholic Church. If we have been less than satisfactory in proposing these three systems, let it be ascribed to our weakness in writing, and especially to time, which was narrow for us, as we are too occupied in practice.