The 16th-century physician and chemist known as Paracelsus (1493–1541) revolutionized medicine by proving that remedies containing copper sulfate, iron, mercury, sulfur, and other chemical compounds could play a role in treating diseases. Scornful of both many of his colleagues and ancient medical authorities, he also helped disprove many of the erroneous medical beliefs of his time.

Paracelsus—originally Theophrastus von Hohenheim—was trained as a young boy by his father, a German doctor and chemist. He also attended school for mining in Switzerland, where he learned about metals and minerals that came from the earth.

As a teenager, Theophrastus attended several universities across Europe, but he more highly valued advice from old wives, gypsies (the Roma), sorcerers, and outlaws. The University of Ferrara in Italy was one of the few places in Europe where it was acceptable to criticize the writings of the prominent 2nd-century Greek physician Galen (AD 129–216) and to question the widely held belief that the stars and planets controlled human health. Around this time, he adopted the name Para-Celsus, meaning “above or beyond Celsus,” because he regarded himself as greater than the renowned 1st-century Roman medical writer Aulus Cornelius Celsus.

After graduating from Ferrara, Paracelsus held a variety of jobs across Europe, serving as an army surgeon in the Netherlands and Italy and learning about alchemy in Egypt and Constantinople. Eventually he returned to Switzerland to teach at the University of Basel. In one of his widely attended lectures, Paracelsus shocked the authorities by burning the books of ancient physicians.

In 1530, Paracelsus wrote the best clinical description of syphilis to date and suggested that the ailment could be treated with mercury compounds. He also provided an early explanation for miners’ disease (silicosis), a lung disease triggered by exposure to toxic dust that many Europeans then believed was caused by vengeful mountain goblins. He was the first to suggest the fundamental idea of homeopathy, declaring that “what makes a man ill also cures him.” And in 1536, Paracelsus published one of the first treatises on treating combat wounds caused by gunpowder—a growing problem in Europe as use of the explosive spread in the 16th century.

ADDITIONAL FACTS

  1. Goiters, painful growths on the front of the neck, perplexed medieval doctors until Paracelsus linked them to iodine deficiency. Iodine deficiency remains a problem in much of the developing world, even though the best means of prevention—iodized salt—costs pennies.
  2. Dissatisfied with many of the universities throughout Europe, Paracelsus once wrote that he wondered how “the high colleges managed to produce so many asses.”
  3. After his lectures at Basel, Paracelsus spent many years in disfavor. When one of his patients died, Paracelsus was plagued by a disastrous lawsuit, and he fled the city in the middle of the night.