1541]

MEMORIAL INSCRIPTION

293

Fifty years later his grave was opened, his bones were taken out and put in a new restingplace against the wall of St. Sebastian's Church. The middle of the churchyard was wanted as a site for the Gabriel Chapel. Hohenheim's executor, Michael Setznagel, had placed a slab of red marble on the grave with a memorial inscription. This tablet was transferred. Its inscription is in Latin, which roughly translated runs :

HERE LIES BURIED

PHILIP THEOPHRASTUS

THE FAMOUS DOCTOR OF MEDICINE

WHO CURED WOUNDS, LEPROSY, GOUT, DROPSY
AND OTHER INCURABLE MALADIES OF THE BODY, WITH
WONDERFUL KNOWLEDGE AND GAVE HIS GOODS TO BE
DIVIDED AND DISTRIBUTED TO THE POOR.

IN THE YEAR 1541 ON THE 24TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER
HE EXCHANGED LIFE FOR DEATH.

Beneath this inscription is chiselled the coat of arms of the Bombasts von Hohenheim and below it are the words: "to the living Peace, to the sepulchred Eternal Rest."

But to Paracelsus, sepulchred again and again, even death brought no rest, for many a time his bones were removed. The second time was in 1752, more than two centuries after their first interment, when Archbishop Andreas von Dietrichstein erected a marble pyramid on a pedestal of marble, into which the old red tablet was inserted, and placed it in the church porch. On the pinnacle rests an urn, but his

bones were put in a niche of the obelisk and shut in by a little door of sheet-iron, on which it was desired to paint a portrait of Paracelsus, but by some blunder his father's portrait was substituted, a blunder only discovered in 1869 by Professor Seligmann.

To this day the poor pray there. Hohenheim's memory has "blossomed in the dust" to sainthood, for the poor have canonised him. When cholera threatened Salzburg in 1830, the people made a pilgrimage to his monument and prayed him to avert it from their homes. The dreaded scourge passed away from them and raged in Germany and the rest of Austria.

Earlier in that century Hohenheim's bones had again been disturbed, this time by Dr. Thomas von Sömmering, who got permission to examine the skull. He discovered the wound at its back on which the myth of his violent assassination was founded. It was said that he was flung down from a height amongst the rocks, and that his neck was broken and his skull shattered. Fifty years later, Dr. Aberle controverted it by successive examinations of the bones in 1878, 1881, 1884, and 1886, the results of which he has detailed in his valuable book "Grabdenkmal Schädel und Abbildungen des Theophrastus Paracelsus " (Salzburg, 1891).

He points out that had Paracelsus died of a broken neck, he could not possibly have dictated

1878-86]

EXAMINATIONS

295

his will, as he certainly did in the presence of seven witnesses. Clear indications of rickets were discovered as one result of these examinations, and to its action Dr. Aberle ascribes the curving and thickening of his skull and its consequent deterioration in the grave.

APPENDIX A

Theologorum Patrono Eximio domino Erasmo Roterodamo vndicunque doctissimo suo optimo.

Que mihi sagax musa et Alstoos tribuit medica, candide apud me clamant Similium Iudiciorum manifestus sum Auctor.

Regio epatis pharmacijs non indiget, nec alie due species indigent Laxatiuis, Medicamen est Magistrale Archanum potius ex re confortatiua, specifica et melleis abstersiuis id est consolidatiuis, In defectum epatis essentia est, et que de pinguedine renum medicamina regalia sunt perite laudis. Scio corpusculum Mesuaijcas tuum non posse sufferre colloquintidas, nec Aliquot [aliquod] turbidatum seu minimum de pharmaco Scio me Aptiorem et in Arte mea peritiorem, et scio que corpusculo tuo valeant in vitam longam, quietam et sanam, non indiges vac[u]ationibus.

Tertius morbus est vt apertius Loquar, que materia seu vlcerata putrefactio seu natum flegma vel Accidentale colligatum, vel si fex vrinae, vel tartarum vasis vel Mucillago de reliquijs e spermate, vel si humor nutriens viscosus vel bithuminosa pinguedo resoluta vel quicquid huiusmodi sit, quando de potentia salis (in quo coagulandi vis est) coagulabitur quemadmodum in silice, in berillo potius, similis est hec generatio, que non in te nata perspexi, sed quicquid Iudicaui de minera frusticulata Marmorea existente in renibus ipsis iudicium feci sub nomine rerum coagulatarum.

Si optime Erasme Mea praxis specifica tue Excellentie placuerit Curo ego vt habeas et Medicum et Medicinam. Vale

THEOPHRASTUS.