No one man in history exercised such a revolutionary influence
on medicine and pharmacy as the erratic genius Philipus Aureolus
Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim. The name Paracelsus is believed to
have been coined by himself, probably with the intention of somewhat
Latinising his patronymic, von Hohenheim, and also perhaps as claiming
to rank with the famous Roman physician and medical writer, Celsus. The
family of Bombast was an old and honourable one from Württemberg, but
the father of the founder of the iatro-chemists was a physician who had
settled at Maria-Einsiedeln, a small town in Switzerland, not far from
Zurich. He (the father) died at Villach, in Carinthia, in 1534, aged 71.
Theophrastus was an only child. He was born in 1490 or 1491, and owed
to his father the first inclination of his mind towards medicine and
alchemy. Later he was taught classics at a convent school, and at 16
went to the University of Basel. Apparently he did not stay there
long. Classical studies, and the reverence of authorities, which the
Universities taught, never attracted him. He is found next at Wurzburg,
in the laboratory of Trithemius, an abbot of that city, and a famous
adept in alchemy, astrology, and magic generally. He must have acquired
much chemical skill in that laboratory, and, doubtless, many of his
mystic views began to shape themselves under the instruction of the
learned abbot. But Paracelsus was not content with the artificial ideas
of the alchemists. By some means he became acquainted with the wealthy
Sigismund Fugger, a mine owner in the Tyrol, and either as assistant or
friend he joined him. The Fuggers were the Rothschilds of Germany at
that time, and one of them entertained Charles V at Augsburg, when the
famous diet at which the Emperor was to crush the Reformation was held
in that city. On that occasion the wealthy merchant made a cinnamon
fire for the Emperor, and lighted it with a bond representing a large
sum which Charles owed him.
In the Tyrolese mines Paracelsus learned much about minerals, about
diseases, and about men. Then he travelled through various parts of
Europe, paying his way by his medical and surgical skill, or, as his
enemies said, by conjuring and necromancy. He states that he was in
the wars in Venice, Denmark, and the Netherlands; it is supposed as an
army surgeon, for he afterwards declared that he then learned to cure
forty diseases of the body. He boasted that he learned from gypsies,
physicians, barbers, executioners, and from all kinds of people. He
claims also to have been in Tartary, and to have accompanied the
Khan’s son to Constantinople. Van Helmont tells us that it was in this
city that he met an adept who gave him the philosopher’s stone. Other
chroniclers relate that this adept was a certain Solomon Trismensinus,
who also possessed the elixir of life, and had been met with some two
hundred years later.
Although Paracelsus in his writings appears to hold the current belief
in the transmutation of metals, and in the possibility of producing
medicines capable of indefinitely prolonging life, he wasted no
energy in dreaming about these, as the alchemists generally did. The
production of gold does not seem to have interested him, and his aims
in medicine were always eminently practical. It is true that he named
his compounds catholicons, elixirs, and panaceas, but they were all
real remedies for specific complaints; and in the treatment of these he
must have been marvellously successful.
Whether he ever went to Tartary or not, and whether he served in
any wars or not, may be doubtful. His critics find no evidence of
acquaintance with foreign languages or customs in his works, and they
do find indications of very elementary notions of geography. But it
is certain that for ten years he was peregrinating somewhere; if his
travels were confined to Germany the effect was the same. Germany
was big enough to teach him. Passionately eager to wrest from Nature
all her secrets, gifted with extraordinary powers of observation and
imagination, with unbounded confidence in himself, and bold even to
recklessness as an experimenter, this was a man who could not be
suppressed. Armed with his new and powerful drugs, and not afraid to
administer them, cures were inevitable; other consequences also, in all
probability.
When, therefore, Paracelsus arrived at Basel, in the year 1525, in the
thirty-second year of his age, his fame had preceded him. Probably
he was backed by high influence. According to his own account he had
cured eighteen princes during his travels, and some of these may have
recommended him to the University authorities. It is to the credit
of Paracelsus that he was warmly supported by the saintly priest
Œcolampadius (Hausschein), who subsequently threw in his lot with
the reformers. Besides being appointed to the chair of medicine and
surgery, Paracelsus was made city physician.
His lectures were such as had never been heard before at a university.
He began his course by burning the works of Galen and Avicenna in a
chafing dish, and denouncing the slavish reliance on authority which
at that time characterised medical teaching and practice. He taught
from his own experience, and he gave his lectures in German. Many
quotations of his boastful utterance have been handed down to us, and
they match well with what we know of him from his recognised writings.
All the universities had less experience than he, and the very down on
his neck was more learned than all the authors. He likened himself to
Hippocrates, the one ancient whom he esteemed. He contrasted himself
with the doctors in white gloves who feared to soil their fingers in
the laboratory. “Follow me,” he cried; “not I you, Avicenna, Galen,
Rhazes, Montagnana, Mesuë, and ye others. Ye of Paris, of Montpellier,
of Swabia, of Cologne, of Vienna; from the banks of the Danube, of the
Rhine, from the islands of the seas, from Italy, Dalmatia, Sarmatia,
and Athens, Greeks, Arabs, Israelites. I shall be the monarch, and mine
shall be the monarchy.”
In his capacity as city physician he naturally created many enemies
among his fellow practitioners. His friends said he cured the cases
which they found hopeless; they said he only gave temporary relief at
the best, and that his remedies often killed the patients. He fell
foul, too, of the apothecaries. He denounced their drugs and their
ignorance. The three years he spent in Basel must have been lively both
for him and his opponents.
“In the beginning,” he says, “I threw myself with fervent zeal on the
teachers. But when I saw that nothing resulted from their practice
but killing, laming, and distorting; that they deemed most complaints
incurable; and that they administered scarcely anything but syrups,
laxatives, purgatives, and oatmeal gruel, with everlasting clysters, I
determined to abandon such a miserable art and seek truth elsewhere.”
Again he says: “The apothecaries are my enemies because I will not
empty their boxes. My recipes are simple and do not call for forty
or fifty ingredients. I seek to cure the sick, not to enrich the
apothecaries.”
His career at Basel was brought to a close by a dispute with a
prebendary of the cathedral named Lichtenfels, whom he had treated.
The canon, in pain, had promised him 200 florins if he would cure him.
The cure was not disputed, but as Paracelsus had only given him a few
little pills, the clergyman relied on the legal tariff. Paracelsus
sued him, and the court awarded the legal fee, which was six florins.
The doctor published his comments on the case, and it can readily be
supposed that they were of such a character as to amount to contempt of
court. He found it advisable to leave Basel hurriedly.
Between 1528 and 1535 he lived and practised at Colmar, Esslingen,
Nuremberg, Noerdlingen, Munich, Regensburg, Amberg, Meran, St. Gall,
and Zurich. From Switzerland he again set forth, and records of him are
to be traced in Carinthia and Hungary. Lastly, the Prince Palatine,
Duke Ernst of Bavaria, took him under his protection, and settled him
at Salzburg. There a few months afterwards he died. From dissipation
and exhaustion, say his enemies; by assassination, say his friends. A
German surgeon who examined his skull when the body was exhumed thirty
years after death, found in it a fracture of the temporal bone, which,
he declared, could only have been produced during life, because the
bones of a solid but desiccated skull could not have separated as
was the case here. It was suggested that some hirelings of the local
doctors whose prospects were endangered by this formidable invader had
“accidentally” pushed him down some rocks, and that it was then that
the fracture was caused. A monument to this great medical revolutionist
is still to be seen by the chapel of St. Philip Neri, at Salzburg. It
is a broken pyramid of white marble, with a cavity in which is his
portrait, and a Latin inscription which commemorates his cures of
diseases, and his generosity to the poor in the following terms:--
“Conditur hic Philippus Theophrastus, insignis Medicinæ
Doctor, qui dira illa vulnera, lepram, podagram, hydroposim,
aliaque insanabilia contagia mirificu arte sustulit; ac bona
sua in pauperes distribuenda collocandaque honoravit. Anno
1541, die 24 Septembr. vitam cum morte mutavit.”
(“Here lies Philippus Theophrastus, the famous Doctor of
Medicine, who by his wonderful art cured the worst wounds,
leprosy, gout, dropsy, and other diseases deemed incurable and
to his honour, shared his possessions with the poor.”)
Among the contemporaries of Paracelsus were Luther, Columbus,
and Copernicus. Their names alone are sufficient to show how the
long-suppressed energy of the human intellect was at that period
bursting forth. These four men were perhaps the greatest emancipators
of the human race from the chains of slavish obedience to authority
in the past thousand years. Paracelsus was not, so far as is known, a
Lutheran Protestant. But he could not help sympathising with his heroic
countryman. “The enemies of Luther,” he wrote, “are to a great extent
fanatics, knaves, bigots, and rogues. You call me a medical Luther,
but you do not intend to honour me by giving me that name. The enemies
of Luther are those whose kitchen prospects are interfered with by his
reforms. I leave Luther to defend what he says, as I will defend what
I say. That which you wish for Luther you wish for me; you wish us
both to the fire.” There was, indeed, much in common between these two
independent souls.
Columbus landed in the Western world the year before Paracelsus was
born. Luther burnt the Pope’s Bull at Wittenberg in 1520, and it was
this action of his which at the time at least thrilled the German
nation more than any other event in the history of the Reformation.
It is evident that Paracelsus, in imitating the conduct of his famous
contemporary, was only demonstrating his conviction that scientific, no
less than religious, thought needed to free itself from the shackles of
tyrannic tradition.