MC Paracelsus

A while ago I downloaded the Amazon Kindle app for Android onto my phone. I browsed through the Free section and grabbed Frankenstein, because I had never read it—I've had a paperback copy for a long time, probably since college or possibly even high school, but I'd never even opened it; when I just now opened it I cracked the binding! Anyway, I've been reading it in bits and pieces when I'm out somewhere and bored and it's not my turn in any Wordfeud games...

The other night I came across this passage that amused me:

"Every minute," continued M. Krempe with warmth, "every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost. You have burdened your memory with exploded systems, and useless names. Good God! in what desert land have you lived, where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies, which you have so greedily imbibed, are a thousand years old, and as musty as they are ancient. I little expected in this enlightened and scientific age to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. My dear sir, you must begin your studies entirely anew."

Of course I had to look up Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. It turns out Albertus Magnus was actually a respectable medieval scientist—there's even a college in New Haven named after him; it was only in later times that many books on alchemy were falsely attributed to him.

Paracelsus was more of a proper alchemical wacko, though he did give zinc its name and created laudanum. One of his names was Theophrastus, which I know as the name of a board game about alchemy. (The game was in fact named after Paracelsus and not the original ancient Greek Theophrastus.) But I was particularly struck by this quotation from him:

I am Theophrastus, and greater than those to whom you liken me; I am Theophrastus, and in addition I am monarcha medicorum and I can prove to you what you cannot prove...I need not don a coat of mail or a buckler against you, for you are not learned or experienced enough to refute even a word of mine...As for you, you can defend your kingdom with belly-crawling and flattery. How long do you think this will last?...Let me tell you this: every little hair on my neck knows more than you and all your scribes, and my shoe buckles are more learned than your Galen and Avicenna, and my beard has more experience than all your high colleges.

This could totally be a brag-rap, and I'd love to hear this set to some bombastic beats. (One of his other names was Bombastus.)