Disputationes chymico-medicae

The Philosopher, or the Physician Consulted by Nature.

...I know that I will be governed by him. I am anxious about myself: neither my talent, nor the ornaments of my learning, nor my experience are sufficient to take up this business. I have never considered any burden so light that I did not admit my strength was unequal to it. Therefore, it was not at all within my own power to take up the burden of such an obscure and, until now, little-trodden profession, unless it had been our Patron and Nourisher's task to ensure that what I could not sustain with the muscles of my erudition, I might endure through his benevolence and the strength of his encouragement. If these were not present, my spirit would surely fail, and I would judge that there could be no place for the darkness of my ignorance in such a great light of the sciences. Therefore, recollecting myself as I am, I uniquely trust that divine help will assist my weakness, wisdom will assist my foolishness, and the counsel and help of the most illustrious Prince will protect my dutiful boldness. This I especially pray for from God, the Best and Greatest; and I most submissively desire it from the great kindness of such a great Prince. Having conceived this alacrity of mind, and since I have great confidence in the plan I have begun, I easily understand that nothing more is expected of me except study, labor, diligence, and vigilance in this kind of learning and practice. Although all these may seem to be matters of good will rather than great power, I will nevertheless strive so that whatever I sweat out in the furnace of my duty, and whatever I labor at with my plow, may burn, boil, and happily hasten for the praise of the most powerful God, the health of the Academy and all good men, and especially for the growth of those matters which I am about to treat.

But now, having sent ahead these most pleasant tidings of a most praiseworthy institution, what remains, Listeners, for the human race—and especially for the Christian world—to admire and look up to? Beyond the tireless and uninterrupted meditation on human salvation, granted to us by Christ our Mediator in this age of grace, what is better than to devote effort to those things which must be dug out from the most obscure darkness and impurities of elemental things in that great "Book of Nature" or the universe, and transferred into necessary and useful medical use?

What, I ask, is more pleasant, more honest, and more beautiful than to pursue, with a certain contentious and unmoved perseverance of mind in this unclean world, those things which have no author but God himself and the Lumen Naturae Light of Nature, for the purpose of preserving our life more safely and returning it more quickly to a state free from diseases and calamities? O admirable study! O precious desire! Until now, it has found very few imitators, even fewer cultivators, many haters, and most of all, enemies! How often has it seemed desirable to some—even those whom it most concerned to humble themselves to this—that this kind of study had never been born: or after it was born, that it was immediately killed or admitted nowhere. There are not a few who, having found grain, prefer to eat acorns. They are inebriated by the ancient and sweet pleasantness of opinions and pride, as if by a draft from Circe's cup. They prefer to wander with the perverse multitude among the densest and thickest clouds of obscurity, rather than to think well with the sober few. And which of us has not seen, has not understood, how insultingly and unjustly in the previous years of this beginning century, the original: "Lerna," a reference to the Lernaean Hydra, implying a swamp of many-headed problems or errors of the Parisian Physicians fought against this light, which by the singular grace of God is shining again in Medical Schools throughout Europe? How cruelly and frivolously, after a rash impulse, a sentence was promulgated proscribing all those who, by necessity because of the huge defects in Medicine, humble themselves to the wealth of CHYMIATRIA chemical medicine. Truly, this was an argument of extreme impiety and old-womanish foolishness: to proscribe first God from the limits of the world, and then even Nature herself from the bosom of the whole Universe; to forbid them fire and water; and to deprive those leaning on the firmest supports of God and nature of all community in the city. If, therefore, it was the prize of the insane school of the Parisians to break the genuine path and to endanger the reputation of learning and esteem, perhaps they have found sharp defenders of the CHYMIATRIA they drove into disgrace. If there is any manhood in them, let them go out to meet these defenders, or, struck by a heavy whirlwind of repentance, let them return to a sounder mind. The envious are accustomed to be afflicted by the growth...