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PARACELSUS (c. 1490-1541)
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See also:PARACELSUS (c. 1490-1541) , the famous See also:German physician of the 16th See also:century, was probably See also:born near See also:Einsiedeln, in the See also:canton See also:Schwyz, in 1490 or 1491 according to some, or 1493 according to others. His See also:father, the natural son of a See also:grand-See also:master of the See also:Teutonic See also:order, was Wilhelm Bombast von See also:Hohenheim, who had a hard struggle to make a subsistence as a physician. His See also:mother was See also:superintendent of the See also:hospital at Einsiedeln, a See also:post she relinquished upon her See also:marriage. Paracelsus's name was See also:Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim; for the names See also:Philippus and Aureolus which are sometimes added See also:good authority is wanting, and the epithet Paracelsus, like some similar compounds, was probably one of his own making, and was meant to denote his superiority to See also:Celsus.
Of the See also:early years of Paracelsus's See also:life hardly anything is known. His father was his first teacher, and took pains to instruct him in all the learning of the See also:time, especially in See also:medicine. Doubtless Paracelsus learned rapidly what was put before him, but he seems at a comparatively early See also:age to have questioned the value of what he was expected to acquire, and to have soon struck out ways for himself. At the age of sixteen he entered the university of See also:Basel, but probably soon abandoned the studies therein pursued. He next went to J. See also:Trithemius, the See also: But the confection of the See also: He himself, however, valued his method and his knowledge very differently, and argued that he knew what his predecessors were ignorant of, because he had been taught in no human school. " Whence have 1 all my secrets, out of what writers and authors? Ask rather how the beasts have learned their arts. If nature can instruct irrational animals, can it not much more men?" In this new school discovered by Paracelsus, and since attended with the happiest results by many others, he remained for about ten years. He had acquired great stores of facts, which it was impossible for him to have reduced to order, but which gave him an unquestionable superiority to his contemporaries. So in 1526 or 1527, on his return to Basel, he was appointed See also:town physician, and shortly afterwards he gave a course of lectures on medicine in the university. Unfortunately for him, the lectures See also:broke away from tradition. They were in German, not in Latin; they were expositions of his own experience, of his own views, of his own methods of curing, adapted to the diseases that afflicted the Germans in the See also:year 1527, and they were not commentaries on the See also:text of See also:Galen or See also:Avicenna. They attacked, not only these great authorities, but the German graduates who followed them and disputed about them in 1527. They criticized in no measured terms the current medicine of the time, and exposed the practical See also:ignorance, the pomposity, and the greed of those who practised it. The truth of Paracelsus's doctrines was apparently confirmed by his success in curing or mitigating diseases for which the See also:regular physicians could do nothing. For about a couple of years his reputation and practice increased to a surprising extent. But at the end of that time See also:people began to recover themselves. Paracelsus had burst upon the schools with such novel views and methods, with such irresistible See also:criticism, that all opposition was at first crushed fiat. Gradually the See also:sea began to rise. His enemies watched for slips and failures; the physicians maintained that he had no degree, and insisted that he should give proof of his qualifications. Moreover, he had a pharmaceutical See also:system of his own which did not harmonize with the commercial arrangements of the apothecaries, and he not only did not use up their drugs like the Galenists, but, in the exercise of his functions as town physician, he urged the authorities to keep a See also:sharp See also:eye on the purity of their wares, upon their knowledge of their art, and upon their transactions with their See also:friends the physicians. The growing See also:jealousy and enmity culminated in a dispute with See also:Canon See also:Cornelius von Lichtenfels, who, having called in Paracelsus after other physicians had given up his See also:case, refused to pay the See also:fee he had promised in the event of cure; and, as the See also:judges, to their discredit, sided with the canon, Paracelsus had no alternative but to tell them his See also:opinion of the whole case and of their notions of See also:justice. So little doubt left he on the subject that his friends judged it prudent for him to leave Basel at once, as it had been resolved to punish him for the attack on the authorities of which he had been guilty. He departed in such haste that he carried nothing with him, and some chemical apparatus and other See also:property were taken See also:charge of by J. Oporinus (1507-1568), his See also:pupil and See also:amanuensis. He went first to See also:Esslingen, where he remained for a brief See also:period, but had soon to leave from See also:absolute want. Then began his wandering life, the course of which can be traced by the See also:dates of his cj) various writings. He thus visited in succession See also:Colmar, See also:Nuremberg, See also:Appenzell, See also:Zurich, Pfaffers, See also:Augsburg, See also:Villach, See also:Meran, Middelheim and other places, seldom staying a twelvemonth in any of them. In this way he spent some dozen years, till 1341, when he was invited by See also:Archbishop See also:Ernst to See also:settle at See also:Salzburg, under his See also:protection. After his endless tossing about, this seemed a promise and See also:place of repose. It proved, however, to be the See also:complete and final See also:rest that he found, for after a few months he died, on the 24th of See also:September. The cause of his See also:death, like most other details in his See also:history, is uncertain. His enemies asserted that he died in a See also:low See also:tavern in consequence of a drunken debauch of some days' duration. Others maintain that he was thrown down a steep place by some emissaries either of the physicians or of the apothecaries, both of whom he had during his life most grievously harassed. He was buried in the See also:churchyard of St See also:Sebastian, but in 1752 his bones were removed to the See also:porch of the See also: The first collected edition was made by Johann Huser in German. It was printed at Basel in 1589–1591, in eleven volumes quarto, and is the best of all the editions. Huser did not employ the early printed copies only, but collected all the See also:manuscripts which he could procure, and used them also in forming his text. The only See also:drawback is that rather than omit anything which Paracelsus may have composed, he has gone to the opposite extreme and included writings with which it is See also:pretty certain Paracelsus had nothing to do. The second collected German edition is in four volumes See also:folio, 1603–1605. Parallel with it in 1603 the first collected Latin edition was made by Palthenius. It is in eleven volumes quarto, and was completed in 1605. Again, in 1616–1618 appeared a reissue of the folio German edition of 1603, and finally in 1658 came the See also:Geneva Latin version, in three volumes folio, edited by Bitiskius. The works were originally composed in Swiss-German, a vigorous speech which Paracelsus wielded with unmistakable See also:power. The Latin versions were made or edited by See also:Adam von Bodenstein, See also:Gerard Dorn, See also:Michael Toxites and Oporinus, about the See also:middle of the 16th century. A few See also:translations into other See also:languages exist, as of the Chirurgia magna and some other works into See also:French, and of one or two into Dutch, See also:Italian and even Arabic. The translations into See also:English amount to about a dozen, dating mostly from the middle of the 17th century. The See also:original editions of Paracelsus's works are getting less and less See also:common; even the English versions are among the rarest of their class. Over and above the numerous editions, there is a bulky literature of an explanatory and controversial See also:character, for which the See also:world is indebted to Paracelsus's followers and enemies. A good See also:deal of it is taken up with a See also:defence of chemical, or, they were called, " spagyric," medicines against the attacks of the supporters of the Galenic See also:pharmacopoeia. The aim of all Paracelsus's See also:writing is to promote the progress of medicine, and he endeavours to put before physicians a grand ideal of their profession. In his attempts he takes the widest view of medicine. He bases it on the See also:general relationship which See also:man bears to nature as a whole; he cannot See also:divorce the life of man from that of the universe; he cannot think of disease otherwise than as a phase of life. I-Ie is compelled, therefore, to rest his medical practice upon general theories of the See also:present See also:state of things; his medical system— if there is such a thing—is an See also:adaptation of his See also:cosmogony. It is this latter which has been the stumbling-See also:block to many past critics of Paracelsus, and unless its character is remembered it will be the same to others in the future. Dissatisfied with the Aristotelianism of his time, Paracelsus turned with greater expectation to the See also:Neoplatonism which was reviving. His eagerness to understand the relationship of man to the universe led him to the Kabbala, where these mysteries seemed to be explained, and from these unsubstantial materials he constructed, so far as it can be understood, his visionary See also:philosophy. Interwoven with it, however, were the results of his own personal experience and work in natural history and chemical See also:pharmacy and practical medicine, unfettered by any speculative generalizations, and so shrewd an observer as Paracelsus was must have often See also:felt that his philosophy and his experience did not agree with one another. Some of his doctrines are alluded to in the See also:article MEDICINE (q.v.), and it would serve no purpose to give even a brief See also:sketch of his views, seeing that their See also:influence has passed entirely away, and that they are of See also:interest only in their place in a general history of medicine and philosophy. Defective, however, as they may havebeen, and unfounded in fact, his kabbalistic doctrines led him to trace the dependence of the human See also:body upon See also:outer nature for its sustenance and cure. The See also:doctrine of signatures, the supposed connexion of every part of the little world of man with a corresponding part of the great world of nature, was a fanciful and false exaggeration of this doctrine, but the See also:idea carried in its See also:train that of specifics. This led to the See also:search for these, which were not to be found in the bewildering and untested mixtures of the Galenic prescriptions. Paracelsus had seen how bodies were purified and intensified by chemical operations, and he thought if See also:plants and minerals could be made to yield their active principles it would surely be better to employ these than the crude and unprepared originals. He had besides arrived by some See also:kind of See also:intuition at the conclusion that the operations in the body were of a chemical character, and that when disordered they were to be put right by See also:counter operations of the same kind. It may be claimed for Paracelsus that he embraced within the idea of chemical See also:action something more than the alchemists did. Whether or not he believed in the philosopher's elixir is of very little consequence. If he did, he was like the rest of his age; but he troubled himself very little, if at all, about it. He did believe in the immediate use for See also:therapeutics of the salts and other preparations which his practical skill enabled him to make. Technically he was not a chemist; he did not concern himself either with the See also:composition of his compounds or with an explanation of what occurred in their making. If he could get potent drugs to cure disease he was content, and he worked very hard in an empirical way to make them. That he found out some new compounds is certain; but not one great and marked See also:discovery can be ascribed to him. Probably, therefore, his positive services are to be summed up in this wide application of chemical ideas to pharmacy and therapeutics; his indirect and possibly greater services are to be found in the stimulus, the revolutionary stimulus, of his ideas about method and general theory. It is most difficult to appreciate aright this man of fervid See also:imagination, of powerful and persistent convictions, of unbated honesty and love of truth, of keen insight into the errors (as he thought them) of his time, of a merciless will to See also:lay See also:bare these errors and to reform the abuses to which they gave rise, who in an instant offends us by his boasting, his grossness, his want of self-respect. It is a problem how to reconcile his ignorance, his weakness, his superstition, his crude notions, his erroneous observations, his ridiculous influences and theories, with his grasp of method, his lofty views of the true See also:scope of medicine, his lucid statements, his incisive and epigrammatic criticisms of men and motives. See See also:Marx, Zur Wurdigung See also:des Theophrastus von Hohenheim (See also:Gottingen, 1842); Mook, Theophrastus Paracelsus, eine kritische Studie (See also:Wurzburg, 1876) ; Hartman, Life of P. T. Paracelsus (See also:London, 1887); See also:Schubert and Sudhoff, Paracelsus-Forschungen (Frankfurt a.M., 1887–1889) ; Sudhoff, Versuch einer Kritik der Echtheit der Paracelsischen Schriften (See also:Berlin, 1894) ; See also:Waite, The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus (London, 1894). Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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