"bulls" of popes were human works, and that "acts of charity were
dearer to God than hecatombs." He was also accused of alchemy.
Fleeing from persecution, he finally perished by shipwreck.

Arnald was the first great representative of the school of
Montpellier. He devoted much time to the study of chemicals, and
was active in attempting to re-establish the teachings of
Hippocrates and Galen. He was one of the first of a long line of
alchemists who, for several succeeding centuries, expended so
much time and energy in attempting to find the "elixir of life."
The Arab discovery of alcohol first deluded him into the belief
that the "elixir" had at last been found; but later he discarded
it and made extensive experiments with brandy, employing it in
the treatment of certain diseases--the first record of the
administration of this liquor as a medicine. Arnald also revived
the search for some anaesthetic that would produce insensibility
to pain in surgical operations. This idea was not original with
him, for since very early times physicians had attempted to
discover such an anaesthetic, and even so early a writer as
Herodotus tells how the Scythians, by inhalation of the vapors of
some kind of hemp, produced complete insensibility. It may have
been these writings that stimulated Arnald to search for such an
anaesthetic. In a book usually credited to him, medicines are
named and methods of administration described which will make the
patient insensible to pain, so that "he may be cut and feel
nothing, as though he were dead." For this purpose a mixture of
opium, mandragora, and henbane is to be used. This mixture was
held at the patient's nostrils much as ether and chloroform are
administered by the modern surgeon. The method was modified by
Hugo of Lucca (died in 1252 or 1268), who added certain other