by
Allen G. Debus
Morris Fishbein Professor of the History of Science and Medicine
The University of Chicago
Paracelsus (1493-1541), more properly Theophrastus Phillippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim, was born in Einsiedeln, Switzerland in 1493, one year after Columbus' first voyage to the New World. He was a contemporary of Nicholas Copernicus, Martin Luther, Leonardo da Vinci and a host of other figures we associate with the shattering of medieval thought and the birth of the modern world.
In fact, Paracelsus played a part in this change no less than the others. During his lifetime he was called by some the "Luther of Medicine" and the scientific debates of the late sixteenth century were centered more frequently on the innovations of Paracelsus than they were on the heliocentric astronomy of Copernicus.
How may we characterize the intellectual world in which Paracelsus lived? Surely a major factor was Renaissance humanism -- the fascination with antiquity in all of its aspects. Authors sought to write a stylistically pure Latin to replace the barbarous Latin of the Middle Ages. They travelled in search of old manuscripts that might have survived in isolated monasteries ... and they studied Greek so that they might translate these treasures of the ancient world. This search for the work of ancient authors was felt first in literature, rhetoric and history, but by the late fifteenth century there was an increasing interest in the sciences and medicine. Astronomers and mathematicians sought an accurate text of Ptolemy's Almagest and both the observations and the mathematics of this text were to form the foundation for Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium (1543). In medicine Galen, Hipprocates, and Dioscorides were newly translated from Greek. The recovery of the medical writings of Celsus was highly influential because they presented medical terminology in the elegant Latin of the first century A.D. Indeed, for many humanists the discovery of new texts seemed as exciting as the discovery of the new lands being made by contemporary explorers. The result was a new reliance on the truths of antiquity and establishment medicine became increasingly dependent upon the writings of Galen, the "Prince of Physicians." In short, with the corrected translations of ancient authors -- and more important, the discovery of new manuscripts lost to scholars for a thousand years -- it was thought possible to restore the real truths of both Aristotelian natural philosophy and Galenic medicine.
Hermes was known not only to the Church Fathers, but also as one of the great figures of alchemy. Even today we speak of a hermetic seal in chemistry. Traditional alchemy did include a belief in the transmutation of the base metals to gold, but more important was the separation by chemical means of the pure essence of a substance from its impurities. Through such processes (frequently through distillation) the true divine signatures impressed on earthly things by the Creator for their proper use (and then lost at the time of the Fall) might be rediscovered. In this fashion we would learn more of our Creator while recovering His gifts through our labor. Surely we could expect to find substances of medicinal value in this way.
In short, by 1500 the impact of the newly recovered texts was leading in two directions. On the one hand the natural philosophers and physicians of the schools had developed an increased respect for Aristotle, Galen and other ancient authorities. On the other hand, the recovery of the Corpus Hermeticum and other more mystical texts placed an emphasis on natural magic, the relationship of man to the macrocosm, and sought divine truths in the study of nature. The first path led to truth through traditional medicine and a reliance on mathematics and the physics of motion for our understanding of nature: the second led to a more mystical and religious basis of knowledge and turned to chemistry as a key to man and nature alike.
While still a youth Paracelsus became aware of many of the conflicting currents of his age. His father was a physician in Einsiedeln and he practiced in a number of mining towns. The boy surely learned some practical medicine at home through observing his father. It is likely that he learned some folk medicine as well. He also picked up some alchemy from his father who had an interest in the subject. And in mining towns he would have observed metallurgical practices as well as the diseases that afflicted the men who worked the mines. Traditionally it has been said that Paracelsus was taught by several bishops and the occultist abbot of Sponheim, Johannes Trithemius. At the age of fourteen the boy left home to begin a long period of wandering. He apparently visited a number of universities, but there is no proof that he ever took a medical degree. As an adult, however, he picked up practical medical knowledge by working as a surgeon in a number of the mercenary armies that ravaged Europe in the seemingly endless wars of the period. He wrote that he visited most of the countries of Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe.
Almost immediately Paracelsus became a figure of contention. He heaped scorn on the conservative physicians of the University, and, at the St. John's Day bonfire, threw Avicenna's revered Canon of medicine to the blaze. Then, his patient, Frobenius, died. This was followed by a disastrous lawsuit and he left Basel in haste, even leaving behind his manuscripts.
The final years of his life find Paracelsus moving from town to town, and again, he often left his manuscripts behind as he had in Basel. He comes across as an angry man who antagonized many of those he met -- even those who tried to help him. In the end he was called to Salzburg to treat the suffragan bishop, Ernest of Wittelsbach. There he died at the early age of forty-eight.
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