MISGUIDED MEDICINE HALL OF FAME
PARACELSUS
1493–1541 • SWITZERLAND
This Swiss German physician wandered the world (often because he’d been ostracized from a university or entire town) trying to find colleges that were worth his time—and found them all wanting. He once famously said he didn’t know how “the high colleges managed to produce so many high asses.” Ugh. If Bob Dylan and vinyl had existed in the time of Paracelsus, he would have chastised you for listening to Highway 61 Revisited on anything else.
His full name before he renamed himself with a dunk on poor dead Celsus? Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. Try saying that three times fast, huh?
Paracelsus wrote one major work, a book about surgery. Guess what he called it? Die Grosse Wundartznei which actually, no kidding, means The Great Surgery Book. Literally.
You wanna know the most irritating about Paracelsus? Every once in a great while, he came up with an idea that shook the foundations of medicine. The rest of the time, he was just being a total jagweed. We’ve collected some of Paracelsus’ most notable beliefs and creations for you here.
Paracelsus championed the use of chemicals to treat disease, and is credited as the person who first fused the fields of chemistry and health care. So, he’s kinda responsible for medicine. Like, pills and shots and just the whole medicine thing. Carl Jung wrote of him, “We see in Paracelsus not only a pioneer in the domains of chemical medicine, but also in those of an empirical psychological healing science.” But did we mention . . .
ALCHEMY
. . . that Paracelsus came to many of these innovative ideas as he studied the magical process of turning some metals into gold? Because he totally did that.
WOUND CLEANLINESS
Paracelsus fought for keeping wounds clean and free of infection in an era when wound infection was just the cost of doing business. He wrote, “If you prevent infection, Nature will heal the wound all by herself.” That’s true! Well, not always, but it’s a heck of a lot better than prevailing practices of the time.
MEDICAL ASTROLOGY
Paracelsus believed that certain planets ruled certain organs in the body and also that each pair was associated with a specific metal for some reason.
ZINC
He discovered and named zinc. (The German zinke translates to “pointed,” which probably referred to the pointy crystals that developed after smelting zinc.) We’ve gotta hand it to Paracelsus; this one is pretty hard to hold against him. Zinc is fine, and it’s a pretty cool name.
BOOK BURNING
Paracelsus was so aghast at other doctors dogmatically following the teachings of established medicine that he once made a big show of burning the books of ancient physicians like Galen on the steps of a university. He couldn’t just write a really scathing Tumblr post about them?
NON-BOOK BURNS
It’s hard to completely write off a guy who addressed his colleagues like this: “Let me tell you this: every little hair on my neck knows more than you and all your scribes, my shoe buckles are more learned than your Galen and Avicenna, and my beard has more experience than all your high colleges.” “. . . So, for the last time,” we assume he concluded, “the line is ‘Hamburgers: the cornerstone of a nutritious breakfast.’ Not ‘cheeseburgers,’ noob.”