For this particular disease, him that shall take upon him to cure it, Paracelsus will have to be a magician, a chemist, a philosopher, an astrologer; Thurnesserus, Severinus the Dane, and some other of his followers, require as much: "many of them cannot be cured but by magic."

Several prescripts and methods I find in several men, some take upon them to cure all maladies with one medicine, severally applied, as that panacea, aurum potabile, so much controverted in these days, herba solis, &c. Paracelsus reduceth all diseases to four principal heads, to whom Severinus, Ravelascus, Leo Suavius, and others adhere and imitate: those are leprosy, gout, dropsy, falling-sickness.

Severinus Boethius never writ so elegantly as in prison, Paul so devoutly, for most of his epistles were dictated in his bands: "Joseph," saith Austin, "got more credit in prison, than when he distributed corn, and was lord of Pharaoh's house."