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time, it seems, Randolph became convinced that the supernatural must be studied scientifically and this remained the central theme of his work for the rest of his life. He turned his attention to the study of medicine and the making of elixirs. His medical education remains rather shadowy, but in 1854 PBR set up a medical practice on Boylston Street in Boston and appended M.D. to his name. 15 He kept an alchemical laboratory in his offices and manufactured several elixirs there. The most popular was called Protozone, which replenished "the waste of vitality in the human system" and had wonderful "power over morbid states of mind and body." 16 He also seems to have run a small publishing business from his offices. His medical practice led him to experiment with consciousness altering drugs—opium, belladonna and many others. He also began to speak out on issues of sexuality. His candid and open views on these two issues, drugs and sex, drew much criticism and resulted in persecution from many quarters in later years. However, for some eighteen years, PBR enjoyed a great deal of success. In 1861, at the outbreak of the American Civil War, Dr. Randolph visited California, where he lectured for ten weeks on Rosicrucian doctrine and established the first Rosicrucian Lodge in that state. After this, Randolph departed for foreign shores, "traveling through England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Malta, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Turkey, Greece, and other countries " 17 In his writings he hints that he received high initiations into the Grand Dome of the Rosicrucians in Paris. He visited the famous French mage, Eliphas Levi and reports that in 1861, he participated in secret Rosicrucian rites with Napoleon III and Eliphas Levi.18 While on this trip he compiled material for his famous work, Pre-Adamite Man, dedicated to Abraham Lincoln, rumored to be a close friend. 19 On his return to Boston, PBR offered his services to the US government and raised a regiment of Black Union soldiers, known as the "Fremont Legion." 20 Presumably in reward for this action, President Lincoln sent him to Louisiana, where he was later appointed Principal of the Lincoln Memorial High Grade and Normal School, a school for freed slaves. 21 During this time, Randolph witnessed and studied the "Rites of the Black Voudeux" 22. In July 1866, PBR returned to the Northern States to raise money for his school. He lectured throughout New England and made a bid for a career in politics at the Philadelphia Convention of Southern Loyalists. But it seems that even the post-war North was not ready for this politician of color. Randolph grow disgusted with politics and returned to his practice of medicine and publishing ventures in Boston. 23 Randolph's method of attaining spiritual knowledge was known as the sleep of Sialam, or shiloam. Shiloam, from the Hebrew Shiloah (literally, sending forth), was a spring outside Jerusalem mentioned in the Bible (John IX.7).