http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd.dir/paracelsus.dir/paracelsus_3.html (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)
The Chemical Philosophy
At the time of his death Paracelsus seems to have been well
known as a physician, but not as an author.
He had published several almanacs and a few medical works, but only
one major text, the Grosse Wundartzney (1536) which had gone
into a second edition the following year.
Here he appeared as a medical practitioner discussing wounds,
ulcers, and their cure with salves and balms.
A particularly interesting section treats the wounds caused by gunpowder --
clearly a reflection of a growing problem in sixteenth-century warfare.
Erasmus of Rotterdam 1469-1536.
Print of engraving,
NLM collection
It was well over a decade after his death before physicians
began to look for his manuscripts and to publish them --
frequently with commentaries of their own.
By 1570 many of his works were in print along with treatises written by a
growing number of disciples.
In these works we find a strong challenge to the educational establishment
and its reliance on ancient authorities.
Some Paracelsians took pride in the fact that they had not gone
to the universities at all,
thus avoiding the useless knowledge they would have been subjected to.
Those who did not go to the universities
turned instead to the two-book theory --
reliance on Holy Scripture and on personal observations and experience.
Here they found chemistry particularly valuable since it
separated pure from impure.
Beyond this, chemistry became a basis for explaining both
macrocosmic and microcosmic phenomena.
Even the Creator was pictured as a divine
alchemist in commentaries on the first chapter of Genesis.
Renaissance surgical scene.
From Paracelsus,
Opus chyrurgicum ... und Artzney Buch (Franckfurt am Mayn,
1565)
The Paracelsians differed sharply from the ancients in their
discussion of mathematics.
In his summary of Paracelsian medicine,
Peter Severinus argued that Aristotle's work as
well as Galen's was flawed by its overemphasis on mathematical logic (1571).
The use of weights and measures was acceptable for the physician --
and even the mystical use of numbers
as one might find in the hermetic texts --
but not the logical-geometrical use of mathematics.
Far more acceptable was the analogy of the great world and man which
might be used as a guide to truth.
Paracelsus had written that
"everything which astronomical theory has searched
deeply and gravely by aspects,
astronomical tables and so forth, --
this self-same knowledge should be a lesson and
teaching to you concerning the bodily firmament."
Another object of the Paracelsians' attack was the ancient
system of elements: Earth, Air, Water and Fire with their
attendant qualities and humors.
This was a complex system, but a potentially fragile one,
since a rejection of even one might result in a collapse of the whole.
The Paracelsians argued that nowhere in Holy
Scripture is there reference to the creation of fire and therefore it
cannot be considered an element.
Still, the four elements were not categorically denied by all,
and in the course of the seventeenth century a five
element/principle system evolved in the works of the
chemists and the chemical physicians.
Diagram illustrating the convergence of elements,
humors, and geocosmic factors in
the thinking of Paracelsian chemical physicians.
From Annibal Barlet,
Le Vray et methodique Cours de ... Chymie
(Paris, 1653)
Element theory was only one aspect of macrocosmic interest.
If the Creation was to be understood primarily as an
alchemical separation from an initial chaos, then it seemed
appropriate to use this analogy in geocosmic explanations.
Distillation was the model employed for rain, volcanic
eruptions, and the origin of mountain streams.
Indeed, the earth itself was viewed as a large distillation flask with a
fiery center which heated underground reservoirs and
lava both of which might erupt at the surface.
But if the Paracelsians rejected much of the ancient legacy,
they remained wedded to the ancient vitalistic world view.
Metals originated in the earth from a union of an astral
seed with a proper matrix.
The resultant ore matured in the earth much as a fetus in the mother.
And indeed, there is a life spirit that is essential for both
the organic and the inorganic worlds.
By the final decade of the sixteenth century this spirit
was identified as an aerial niter or saltpeter.
Next page
History of Medicine exhibits
NLM HyperDOC / Paracelsus / December 1993
