In this his views are wide and far-reaching, based on the relationship which man bears to nature as a whole; but in his sweeping condemnations he not only rejected Galenic therapeutics and Galenic anatomy, but condemned dissections of any kind.

He laid the cause of all diseases at the door of the three mystic elements--salt, sulphur, and mercury.

In health he supposed these to be mingled in the body so as to be indistinguishable; a slight separation of them produced disease; and death he supposed to be the result of their complete separation.

The spiritual agencies of diseases, he said, had nothing to do with either angels or devils, but were the spirits of human beings.
He believed that all food contained poisons, and that the function of digestion was to separate the poisonous from the nutritious.

In the stomach was an archaeus, or alchemist, whose duty was to make this separation.