Note 107 — HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. (continued 2)

Paracelsus maintained that the human body is composed of salt, sulphur, and mercury, and that in these “three first substances,” as he calls them, health and disease consist: that the mercury, in proportion to its volatility, produces tremors, mortifications in the ligaments, madness, phrensy, and delirium, and that fevers, phlegmons, and the jaundice, are the offspring of the sulphureous principle, while he supposed that the cholic, stone, gravel, gout, and sciatica derive their origin from salt.