PARACELSUS (Theophrast Bombast von Hohenheim). - Physician, naturalist, theosopher, b. at Einsiedeln (Switzerland) on 10 Nov. 1493, d. at Salzburg on 24 Sept. 1541. Having taken his degree in medicine and being eager to strike out on a path of his own, far from the then prevailing traditionalism of Arabic and Galenic medicine, after having professed his discipline at the University of Basel (1527-28), he traveled for a decade through Germany, Italy, France and the Scandinavian regions, reaching as far as Moscow and Constantinople, not refusing to question even common people: shepherds, gypsies, peasant women about their way of curing ailments, and gathering a large harvest of clinical and chemical observations.
As a man of the Renaissance his view of the world is inspired by Ficinian Neoplatonism: man is a microcosm that reproduces the macrocosm, the universe created by God whose trinity is symbolically reflected in the three fundamental elements, according to P., of the universe and of man: mercury, sulfur and salt; salt the symbol of what is solid (its solid residue is ash); sulfur, of what is aerial (it is destroyed by fire), mercury, of what volatilizes on burning. Directing these elements is the archeus or generative force that resides in the stomach: it falls to it to balance the elements listed above because good health depends on them and not on the humoral balance according to the doctrine of Galen (v.) to which P. is an absolute opponent. The physician must therefore be an assiduous observer of nature. P. was the promoter of the study of chemistry applied to biology and is a precursor of modern medicine.
Although he proclaims that his great teacher has been experience, he also believes in the influence of the stars and of plants, which can determine the change of the archeus on which the health of the body depends. He is a follower of the (magical) principle of "signatures," that is, of the efficacy of the external form of the plant in the cure of diseases; he approves the use of thermal waters, of which he recalls the principal ones.
Bibliography6 works
1941; L. Englert, Paracelsus, Mensch und Arzt, Berlin 1941;
W. E. Peuckert, Das Leben T. P., Stuttgart 1941; I. Betschart,
T. Paracelsus, Einsiedeln-Zurich 1941; F. Spunda, Das Weltbild
des Paracelsus, Vienna 1941; B. S. von Waltershausen, Paracelsus
am Eingang der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte, Leipzig 1942; E.
Matzke, Paracelsus Anschauung von der Welt und vom menschlichen Leben, Berlin 1943; A. Miotto, P., Rome 1951.
Nicola Turchi