Paracelsus (1493/94–1541)

PARACELSUS (1493/94–1541)

PARACELSUS (1493/94–1541), German physician and alchemist. Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, who later gave himself the name Paracelsus, spent his early years in Einsiedeln (Switzerland) and Villach (Austria) before leaving home and wandering through much of Europe while visiting several universities. He gave his attention primarily to medicine but rejected ancient authorities in favor of a conception of medicine based in alchemical experience and a Hermetic view of nature. The principles of all things, Paracelsus believed, were the tria prima of salt, sulfur, and mercury, which separated initially from a prime matter, the mysterium arcanum, and gave rise thereafter to the four elements, described as the material wombs of all the earthly, watery, airy, and fiery parts of nature.

Around 1520 Paracelsus composed the Archidoxis (the title could be translated as Ancient Teaching, or Deepest Knowledge), which focused on the extraction of the "mysteries of nature" (qualities, virtues, powers) from natural things. After brief residences in Salzburg and Strasbourg his reputation as a physician brought him, in 1527, to Basel as city physician and university lecturer. His teaching in German, as opposed to traditional Latin, and his condemnation of traditional medical authorities, led to sharp confrontations with the Basel community of physicians and prompted his flight from the city in 1528. Soon thereafter he composed two works dealing with syphilis in which he spoke out against the use of guaiacum (the wood from a West Indian shrub, a monopoly on the importation of which was held by the Fugger trading dynasty) and recommended instead a medicament made from mercury.

Paracelsus described the discipline of medicine as resting upon four pillars, namely philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and the virtue of the physician. True philosophy, he argued, began with a knowledge of the ars spagyria, the alchemical art of separation. In a work called Opus Paramirum (or Work Beyond Wonder), this concept played a central role in helping him formulate a new conception of disease. In contrast to traditional humoral pathology, Paracelsus argued that each organ of the body contained an archeus (a kind of guiding spirit or principle) which acted as an "inner alchemist" and provided for the proper functioning of the organ by separating that which was good or pure from that which was impure or unnecessary. In many cases of illness, he thought, the separating function of the archeus was disturbed. Moreover, just as everything in nature was born out of the three corporeal principles of salt, sulfur, and mercury, diseases of the body were also born into these three cosmogonic categories and represented themselves as saline (for example, outbreaks of the skin), sulfurous (inflammations or fevers), or mercurial (diseases associated with excess phlegm or fluid). Diseases were thus not consequences of general humoral imbalance, as depicted in Hippocratic and Galenic writing, but specific entities with individual etiologies and characteristics located within particular parts of the body. According to Paracelsus, specific remedies needed to match specific diseases, and physicians cured not by opposing qualities (hot to cold, or wet to dry) as in traditional therapies, but as a result of fashioning a medicine similar to the nature of the illness itself. Medicines could be prepared from anything, since the tria prima was to be found in every part of nature. The most effective medicaments, however, were prepared from minerals and metals, since these related best to the disease categories manifested as saline, sulfurous, or mercurial. In this way, like cured like. All of nature existed as a giant pharmacopoeia, and the alchemist-physician, guided by observation and experience, knew which of its parts related most closely to the various parts of the body. After selecting the appropriate material, the doctor needed to separate its purities from its impure and possibly poisonous parts. The spiritual powers thus extracted were then further ennobled and communicated as a medicine to a specific, diseased part of the body.

MICROCOSM AND MACROCOSM

The new therapy rested on what was actually a very old idea, namely that "the firmament is within man"; that is, there exist everywhere in nature analogies and correspondences between the macrocosm and the microcosm. Within this medical cosmology, Paracelsus believed that astral emanations impressed all earthly things and gave to them their divinely designated "signatures," the material indications showing which parts of the body (microcosm) they could serve best as medicaments. Comprising the being of every person, he thought, was the mortal life of the physical body, the immortal life that corresponded to the soul, and a life derived from the heavens and which corresponded to an "astral body" or "sidereal spirit"—the essential middle link between mind and matter. While not everything in nature possessed a divine soul, all things—plants, animals, minerals, and metals—did possess an astral body, which originated in the stars and which specified for all things their form and function. It was this spirit, or, as Paracelsus refers to it, this astra, that penetrated matter, giving life to all growing things, including minerals and metals. He regarded it as "the secret forger" from which proceeded every form and figure, and the source of the motions and directed actions that accounted for the vitality of the body. Because of the fall of Adam, impurities were mixed in with the astra, and these could sometimes also produce certain kinds of illness.

Since the human being was a condensation of the forces, elements, and creative principles of the entire universe, Paracelsus thought that an understanding of how the healthy universe of the body worked had to begin with an understanding of how the greater world functioned. The keys to doing this were to be found in philosophy and astronomy. Philosophy, however, was not the study of Aristotle, but the comprehension through experience of how the forces, virtues, and powers hidden in natural things operated to produce specific effects. Knowledge of astronomy was similarly based in experience of the world, being an understanding of how the powers and celestial virtues linked to the stars and planets affected the functioning of the human body.

Paracelsus's handbook of surgery, the Grosse Wundartzney, appeared at Augsburg in 1536. His Astronomia Magna, a summary of philosophical, anthropological, and cosmological opinions, was never finished, and other tracts representing his views in theology in addition to medicine and natural philosophy remained unpublished at the time of his death.

See also Alchemy ; Astrology ; Astronomy ; Hermeticism ; Medicine .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Paracelsus. Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Karl Sudhoff and Wilhelm Matthiessen, 1922–1933; rept. Hildesheim, 1996.

——. Sämtliche Werke: Zweite Abteilung: Theologische und Religionsphilosophische Scriften. Edited by Kurt Goldammer. Wiesbaden, 1955.

Secondary Sources

Goldammer, Kurt. Paracelsus: Natur und Offenbarung. Hannover-Kirchrode, 1953.

Grell, Ole Peter, ed. Paracelsus: The Man and His Reputation, His Ideas, and Their Transformation. Leiden, 1998.

Pagel, Walter. Paracelsus. Basel, 1958.

Bruce T. Moran