Chemical Letters to Excellent Philosophers and Physicians in Germany

They are able to produce only playful portents of words, almost to be feared by the sound itself; or to fit clay to furnaces, to add coals, and to roast them in the manner of a bad cook: yet without shame they carry themselves many parasangs ahead of all the ancients and all the moderns famous and conspicuous in doctrine; the rest are shadows; these are wiser; if indeed this is to be wise, to delude men with vain promises, to sell smoke, to speak falsely, and instead of things perceived, known, and often approved, to give things that are harmful, hidden in deceits, and to be shunned, and thus to exhaust the full purses of men, and to hand over certain weapons of death instead of life. Who, I ask, with such pride has given such vain trifles, either without a face beforehand or without a mind? Than those who now enjoy being called by the name of Paracelsus, and [to] chase away every disease with one lyre? Yet this insanity finds many supporters, and it is not without patronage. For the crowd is greedy for novelty, and loves to be ruled by emotion rather than reason. Thence it happens that more people commit their bodies to them, to whom no cautious person would trust a few coins, and dangers are hired at a greater price, and death [is hired], than life and health can be redeemed. O blind minds of men, O blind ages. How many anticyrae islands famous for the production of hellebore, used as a cure for madness will be sufficient for these morals? When, I ask, will the world be wise after so many thousand blows? When will it want to be more cautious at its own damage? Or when will it extend its ears to healthy monitors? When will it continue to follow straight leaders in the art? Why does it not prefer the best footprints of its ancestors, and [why does] everyone not prefer to hold the well-trodden path, rather than to follow the trackless paths full of such great dangers, and to expose the body to so many foul monsters?