Paracelsus

—Paracelsian, adj., n. —Paracelsianism, n. —Paracelsic, Paracelsistic, adj. —Paracelsist, n.

/par'euh sel"seuhs/, n.

1. Philippus Aureolus /fi lip"euhs aw ree"oh leuhs/, (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim), 1493?-1541, Swiss physician and alchemist.

2. (italics) a dramatic poem (1835) by Robert Browning, based on the life of Paracelsus.

* * *

orig. Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim

born Nov. 11 or Dec. 17, 1493, Einsiedeln, Switz.

died Sept. 24, 1541, Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg

German-born Swiss physician and alchemist.

He claimed to have received his doctoral degree at the University of Ferrara. He adopted the name "para-Celsus"

meaning "beyond Celsus" (the Roman authority on medicine)

and wandered throughout Europe and the Middle East, studying with alchemists. He valued the common sense of common people more than the dry teachings of Aristotle, Galen, and Avicenna and stressed nature's healing power. All were welcome at his lectures (which he gave in German, not Latin) at the University of Basel, but such broadmindedness scandalized the authorities, and eventually he was forced to flee the city. His written works include Great Surgery Book (1536). He anticipated by centuries the treatment of syphilis by mercury compounds, the realization that inhaled dust causes miners' silicosis, and homeopathy, and he was the first to connect goitre with minerals in drinking water.

* * *

▪ German-Swiss physician

Introduction

byname of  Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim  

born Nov. 11 or Dec. 17, 1493, Einsiedeln, Switz.

died Sept. 24, 1541, Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg [now in Austria]

      German-Swiss physician and alchemist who established the role of chemistry in medicine (medicine, history of). He published Der grossen Wundartzney (“Great Surgery Book”) in 1536 and a clinical description of syphilis in 1530.

Early life.

      Paracelsus was the only son of a somewhat impoverished German doctor and chemist. Theophrastus, as he was first called, was a small boy when his mother died; his father then moved to Villach in southern Austria. There the boy attended the Bergschule, founded by the wealthy Fugger family of merchant bankers of Augsburg, where his father taught chemical theory and practice. Youngsters were trained at the Bergschule as overseers and analysts for mining operations in gold, tin, and mercury, as well as iron, alum, and copper-sulfate ores.

      The young Paracelsus learned from miners' talk of metals that “grow” in the earth, watched the seething transformations in the smelting vats, and perhaps wondered if he would one day discover how to transmute lead into gold, as the alchemists sought. Thus Paracelsus early gained insight into metallurgy and chemistry that, doubtless, laid the foundations of his later remarkable discoveries in the field of chemotherapy.

      In 1507, at the age of 14, he joined the many vagrant youths who swarmed across Europe in the late Middle Ages, seeking famous teachers at one university after another. During the next five years Paracelsus is said to have attended the universities of Basel, Tübingen, Vienna, Wittenberg, Leipzig, Heidelberg, and Cologne but was disappointed with them all. He wrote later that he wondered how “the high colleges managed to produce so many high asses,” a typical Paracelsian jibe.

Rejection of traditional education and

medicine.

      His attitude upset the schoolmen. “The universities do not teach all things,” he wrote, “so a doctor must seek out old wives, gipsies, sorcerers, wandering tribes, old robbers, and such outlaws and take lessons from them. A doctor must be a traveller, . . . Knowledge is experience.” Paracelsus held that the rough-and-ready language of the innkeeper, barber, and teamster had more real dignity and common sense than the dry-as-dust scholasticism of Aristotle, Galen, and Avicenna, the recognized Greek and Arab medical authorities of his day.

      Paracelsus is said to have graduated from the University of Vienna with the baccalaureate in medicine in 1510, when he was 17. He was, however, delighted to find the medicine of Galen and the medieval Arab teachers criticized in the University of Ferrara, where, he always insisted, he received his doctoral degree in 1516 (university records are missing for that year). At Ferrara he was free to express his rejection of the prevailing view that the stars and planets controlled all the parts of the human body. He is thought to have begun using the name “para-Celsus” (above or beyond Celsus) at about that time, for he regarded himself as even greater than Celsus, the renowned 1st-century Roman physician.

      Clearly a man of this type could never settle for long in any seat of learning, and so, soon after taking his degree, he set out upon many years of wandering through almost every country in Europe, including England, Ireland, and Scotland. He then took part in the “Netherlandish wars” as an army surgeon, at that time a lowly occupation. Later he went to Russia, was held captive by the Tatars, escaped into Lithuania, went south into Hungary, and again served as an army surgeon in Italy in 1521.

      Ultimately his wanderings brought him to Egypt, Arabia, the Holy Land, and, finally, Constantinople. Everywhere he sought out the most learned exponents of practical alchemy, not only to discover the most effective means of medical treatment but also—and even more important—to discover “the latent forces of Nature,” and how to use them. He wrote:

He who is born in imagination discovers the latent forces of Nature. . . . Besides the stars that are established, there is yet another—Imagination—that begets a new star and a new heaven.

Height of his career.

      After about 10 years of wandering, he returned home in 1524 to Villach to find that his fame for many miraculous cures had preceded him. When it became known that the Great Paracelsus, then aged 33, had been appointed town physician and lecturer in medicine at the University of Basel, students from all parts of Europe began to flock into the city. Pinning a program of his forthcoming lectures to the notice board of the university on June 5, 1527, he invited not only students but anyone and everyone. The authorities were scandalized and incensed by his open invitation. Ten years earlier Luther had circulated his Theses on Indulgences. (See Researcher's Note.) Later, Paracelsus wrote:

Why do you call me a Medical Luther? . . . I leave it to Luther to defend what he says, and I will be responsible for what I say. That which you wish to Luther, you wish also to me: you wish us both in the fire.

      Three weeks later, on June 24, 1527, surrounded by a crowd of cheering students, he burned the books of Avicenna, the Arab “Prince of Physicians,” and those of the Greek physician Galen (Galen Of Pergamum), in front of the university. No doubt his enemies recalled how Luther, just six and a half years before at the Elster Gate of Wittenberg on Dec. 10, 1520, had burned a papal bull that threatened excommunication. Paracelsus seemingly remained a Catholic to his death, although it has been said that his books were placed on the Index Expurgatorius. Like Luther, he also lectured and wrote in German rather than Latin, for he loved the common tongue.

      Despite his bombastic blunders, he reached the peak of his tempestuous career at Basel. His name and fame spread throughout the known world, and his lecture hall was crowded to overflowing. He stressed the healing power of nature and raged against those methods of treating wounds, such as padding with moss or dried dung, that prevented natural draining. The wounds must drain, he insisted, for “If you prevent infection, Nature will heal the wound all by herself.” He attacked venomously many other medical malpractices of his time and jeered mercilessly at worthless pills, salves, infusions, balsams, electuaries, fumigants, and drenches, much to the delight of his student-disciples.

      Paracelsus' triumph at Basel lasted less than a year, however, for he had made too many enemies. By the spring of 1528, he was at loggerheads with doctors, apothecaries, and magistrates. Finally, and suddenly, he had to flee for his life in the dead of night. Alone and penniless he wandered toward Colmar in Upper Alsace, about 50 miles north of Basel. He stayed at various places with friends. Such leisurely travel for the next eight years allowed him to revise old manuscripts and to write new treatises. With the publication of Der grossen Wundartzney in 1536 he made an astounding comeback; this book restored, and even extended, the almost fabulous reputation he had earned at Basel in his heyday. He became wealthy and was sought by royalty.

      In May 1538, at the zenith of this second period of notoriety, he returned to Villach again to see his old father, only to find that he had died four years previously. In 1541 Paracelsus himself died in mysterious circumstances at the age of 48 at the White Horse Inn, Salzburg, where he had taken up an appointment under the prince-archbishop, Duke Ernst of Bavaria.

Assessment.

      His medical achievements were outstanding. In 1530 he angered the city council of Nürnberg by writing the best clinical description of syphilis up to that time, maintaining that it could be successfully treated by carefully measured doses of mercury compounds taken internally. He stated that the “miners' disease” ( silicosis) resulted from inhaling metal vapours and was not a punishment for sin administered by mountain spirits. He was the first to declare that, if given in small doses, “what makes a man ill also cures him,” an anticipation of the modern practice of homeopathy. Paracelsus is said to have cured many persons in the plague-stricken town of Stertzing in the summer of 1534 by administering orally a pill made of bread containing a minute amount of the patient's excreta he had removed on a needle point.

      He was the first to connect goitre with minerals, especially lead, in drinking water. He prepared and used new chemical remedies, including those containing mercury, sulfur, iron, and copper sulfate, thus uniting medicine with chemistry, as the first London Pharmacopoeia, in 1618, indicates. Paracelsus, in fact, contributed substantially to the rise of modern medicine, including psychiatric treatment. Carl Gustaf Jung (Jung, Carl), the psychiatrist, wrote of him that “We see in Paracelsus not only a pioneer in the domains of chemical medicine, but also in those of an empirical psychological healing science.”

John G. Hargrave

Additional Reading

The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim, Called Paracelsus the Great, trans. by A.E. Waite, 2 vol. (1894, reprinted 1976), contains a useful biographical preface and full text of the 28 principal works of Paracelsus. Franz Hartmann, The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim, Known by the Name of Paracelsus, and the Substance of His Teachings (1887, reprinted in The Prophecies of Paracelsus, 1973), is a useful biographical outline, with good translations of extracts from the main works. See also A. Stoddart, The Life of Paracelsus, Theophrastus von Hohenheim (1911), a clear biographical outline, with a popular summary of his writings; Basilio de Telepnef, Paracelsus: A Genius Amidst a Troubled World (1945), a concise biographical essay and an outline of his teaching, notes, and a map of his travels, based upon research to 1945; John G. Hargrave, The Life and Soul of Paracelsus (1951), an attempt to correct certain misconceptions regarding the outlook and teaching of this extraordinary genius; Henry M. Pachter, Paracelsus: Magic into Science (1951); Walter Pagel, Paracelsus (1958), an analysis of antecedents of Paracelsus, his thought and influence; and Allen G. Debus, The English Paracelsians (1965), a study of the influence of Paracelsus on English thought in the years after his death.

* * *