The circumstance is thus alluded to by
Butler:--
Bombastes kept the Devil's Bird
Shut in the pummel of his sword;
And taught him all the cunning pranks,
Of past and future mountebanks.
Paracelsus was succeeded by his scholar van Helmont, who had much more
learning, but was as great an enthusiast, both in the chemical and
medical arts as his master, and embraced most of his paradoxical
opinions; and, having more technical terms, he frequently used them
rather to dazzle and confound the understandings of his readers, than to
inform their judgments. By thus giving his writings a mystical air of
wisdom, he rendered them obscure, and sometimes unintelligible;
consequently, more easily imposed them upon the public and vulgar, as
sublime and useful truths. He also vainly boasted that he could cure any
fever in four days' time, by sweating the patient with one draught of
his famous nostrum, the _Praecipitatus Diaphoreticus Paracelsi_; and
further adds, "that no man can deserve the name of a physician, who
cannot cure any fever in four days' time.
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