Paracelsus

Paracelsus (born November 11 or December 17, 1493, Einsiedeln, Switzerland—died September 24, 1541, Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg [now in Austria]) was a German-Swiss physician and alchemist who established the role of chemistry in medicine. He published Der grossen Wundartzney (Great Surgery Book) in 1536 and a clinical description of syphilis in 1530.

Education

Paracelsus, who was known as Theophrastus when he was a boy, was the only son of an impoverished German doctor and chemist. His mother died when he was very young, and shortly thereafter his father moved to Villach in southern Austria. There Paracelsus 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 in iron, alum, and copper-sulfate ores.

The young Paracelsus learned of metals that “grow” in the earth, watched the transformations of metallic constituents in smelting vats, and perhaps wondered about the transmutation of lead into gold—a conversion believed to be possible by the alchemists of the time. Those experiences gave Paracelsus insight into metallurgy and chemistry, which likely laid the foundations of his later remarkable discoveries in the field of chemotherapy.

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In 1507 Paracelsus joined the many wandering youths who traveled throughout Europe in the late Middle Ages, seeking famous teachers at one university after another. Paracelsus is said to have attended the Universities of Basel, Tübingen, Vienna, Wittenberg, Leipzig, Heidelberg, and Cologne during the next five years 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

Paracelsus upset the traditional attitudes of 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 crude language of the innkeeper, the barber, and the teamster had more real dignity and common sense than the dry Scholasticism of Aristotle, Galen of Pergamum, and Avicenna, some of the recognized medical authorities of his day.

Paracelsus is said to have graduated from the University of Vienna with a baccalaureate in medicine in 1510. He then went to the University of Ferrara in Italy, where he was free to express his rejection of the prevailing view that the stars and the planets controlled all the parts of the human body. It is believed that he received a doctoral degree from the University of Ferrara in 1516, and he is presumed to have begun using the name “para-Celsus” (above or beyond Celsus) at about this time as well. His new name reflected the fact that he regarded himself as even greater than Aulus Cornelius Celsus, a renowned 1st-century Roman medical writer.

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 took part in the “Netherlandish wars” as an army surgeon. Later he went to Russia, was held captive by the Tatars, escaped into Lithuania, and went south into Hungary. In 1521 he again served as an army surgeon in Italy. His wanderings eventually took him to Egypt, Arabia, the Holy Land, and, finally, Constantinople. Everywhere he went, 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:

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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.

Career at Basel

In 1524 Paracelsus returned to his home in Villach to find that his fame for many miraculous cures had preceded him. He was subsequently appointed town physician and lecturer in medicine at the University of Basel in Switzerland, and students from all parts of Europe went to the city to hear his lectures. 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 incensed by his open invitation. Ten years earlier German theologian and religious reformer Martin 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, in front of the university, Paracelsus reportedly burned the books of Avicenna, the Muslim “Prince of Physicians,” and those of Greek physician Galen. This incident is said to have again recalled in many peoples’ minds Luther, who on December 10, 1520, at the Elster Gate of Wittenberg, Germany, had burned a papal bull that threatened excommunication. Paracelsus seemingly remained a Catholic to his death; however, it is suspected that his books were placed on the Index Expurgatorius (a catalogue of books from which passages of text considered immoral or against the Catholic religion are removed). Similar to Luther, Paracelsus also lectured and wrote in German rather than in Latin.

Paracelsus reached the peak of his career at Basel. In his lectures, he stressed the healing power of nature and denounced the use of 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 also attacked many other medical malpractices of his time, including the use of worthless pills, salves, infusions, balsams, electuaries, fumigants, and drenches.

However, by the spring of 1528 Paracelsus had fallen into disrepute with local doctors, apothecaries, and magistrates. He left Basel, heading first toward Colmar in Upper Alsace, about 50 miles north of the university. He stayed at various places with friends and continued to travel for the next eight years. During this time, he revised old manuscripts and wrote new treatises. With the publication of Der grossen Wundartzney (Great Surgery Book) in 1536 he restored, and even extended, the revered reputation he had earned at Basel. He became wealthy and was sought by royalty.

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

Contributions to medicine

In 1530 Paracelsus wrote a clinical description of syphilis, in which he maintained that the disease 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.

Paracelsus 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. Swiss psychologist Carl Jung 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.”