1 [Originally delivered as a lecture to the Swiss Society for the History of Medicine and the Natural Sciences, at the annual meeting of the Society for Nature Research, Basel, Sept. 7, 1941, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Paracelsus’s death; published as “Paracelsus als Arzt,” Schweizerische medizinische Wochenschrift (Basel), LXXXI (1941): 40, 1153-70; republished in Paracelsica: Zwei Vorlesungen über den Arzt und Philosophen Theophrastus (Zurich, 1942). The other essay from Paracelsica is published in Vol. 13 of the Coll. Works under the title “Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon,” together with Jung’s foreword to Paracelsica.—EDITORS.]

2 Not. at least, in principle. He did, however, expressly repudiate various superstitious abuses of astrology.

3 Epistolarum Conradi Gessneri, Philosophici Medici Tiguri, Libri III (Zurich, 1577), fol. 2v-r.

4 Adam von Bodenstein, editor of the Vita longa and a pupil of Paracelsus in Basel.

5 Paracelsus himself mentions the accusation in “Haeresiarcha.” Cf. Das Buch Paragranum, ed. Strunz, preface, p. 18.

6 Ibid., p. 105. [For the translation of the quotations from Paracelsus I am greatly indebted to Dr. R. T. Llewellyn.—TRANS.]

7 Liber Azoth, ed. Huser, pp. 534 and 535. He declares that he witnessed the transformation of the tree-goose himself.

8 De caducis (Huser, I), p. 595.

9 Paragranum. The leprositas aeris is a well-known idea in alchemy. Cf. Faust II: “It’s only rust that gives the coin its worth.”

10 P. 33.

11 P. 39.

12 P. 53.

13 P. 35.

14 Labyrinthus medicorum errantium (Huser, I), p. 272.

15 Ibid., p. 269.

16 P. 270.

17 De morbis amentium, Part II, ch. VI (Huser, I), p. 506.

18 Paragranum, p. 32.

19 Ibid., pp. 65f.

20 Pp. 80. 83.

21 Paracelsus makes no real distinction between astronomy and astrology.

22 Ch. II (Huser, I), p. 267.

23 Ibid.

24 Paragranum, p. 50: “As in the heavens so also in the body the stars float free, pure, and have an invisible influence, like the arcana.”

25 Ibid., p. 52.

26 Paracelsus certainly knew the “Tabula smaragdina,” the classical authority of medieval alchemy, and the text: “What is below is like what is above. What is above is like what is below. Thus is the miracle of the One accomplished.”

27 Paragranum, p. 56.

28 Ibid., p. 57.

29 P. 48. Cf. the description in “De ente astrali,” Fragmenta ad Paramirum (Huser, I, p. 132): “The heavens are a spirit and a vapour in which we live just like a bird in time. Not only the stars or the moon etc. constitute the heavens, but also there are stars in us, and these which are in us and which we do not see constitute the heavens also … the firmament is twofold, that of the heavens and that of the bodies, and these latter agree with each other, and not the body with the firmament … man’s strength comes from the upper firmament and all his power lies in it. As the former may be weak or strong, so, too, is the firmament in the body …”

30 Paragranum, p. 56.

31 P. 55.

32 P. 60.

33 P. 54.

34 P. 48.

35 P. 73.

36 P. 72.

37 Alchemical furnace.

38 Paragranum, p. 77.

39 P. 73.

40 Lab. med., ch. IV (Huser, I), p. 370.

41 Ibid., ch. IX, p. 277.

42 The devil.

43 Lab. med., ch. IX, p. 278.

44 Paragranum, p. 67.

45 Hence the alchemists’ strange but characteristic use of language, as for instance: “That body is the place of the science, gathering it together,” etc. (Mylius, Philosophia reformata, p. 123.)

46 The “Liber quartorum” (10th cent.) speaks of the extraction of thought. The relevant passage runs: “Those seated by the river Euphrates are the Chaldaeans, who are skilled in the stars and in judging them, and they were the first to accomplish the extraction of thought.” These inhabitants of the banks of the Euphrates were probably the Sabaeans or Harranites, to whose learned activities we owe the transmission of a great many scientific treatises of Alexandrian origin. Here, as in Paracelsus, alchemical transformation is connected with the influence of the stars. The same passage says: “They who sit by the banks of the Euphrates convert gross bodies into a simple appearance, with the help of the movement of the higher bodies” (Theatrum chemicum, 1622, V, p. 144). Compare the “extraction of thought” with the Paracelsan saying that the Archasius “attracts science and prudence.” See infra, par. 39.

47 Paragranum, p. 26.

48 Ibid., p. 27.

49 Pp 28, 29.

50 Pp. 13, 33.

51 P. 47.

52 Lab. med., ch. VI (Huser, I), p. 273.

53 Ibid.

54 Fragmenta medica, Lib. IV Columnarum Medicinae (Huser, I), p. 142.

55 In this respect, too, Paracelsus showed himself to be a conservative alchemist, for even in antiquity the fourfold alchemical procedure was known as , “the division of the philosophy into four parts” (Berthelot, Alch. grecs, III, xliv, 5).

56 “Archasius” is probably the same as “Archeus,” the life-warmth, also called Vulcan. It seems to have been localized in the belly, where it took care of digestion and produced “foods,” just as the archeus terrae produced metals. This was the alchemist of the earth who regulated the “mineral fire in the mountains” (De transmutationibus rerum naturalium, Lib. VII, Huser, I, p. 900). We find this idea also in the “Liber quartorum,” where the Archeus is called “Alkian” or “Alkien.” “Alkian is … the spirit that nourishes and governs man, through which comes about the conversion of his food and his animal generation, and through it man exists” (Theatr. chem., 1622, V, p. 152). “The Alkien of the earth is the animal Alkien: at the ends of the earth … are powers … like those animal powers which the physicians call Alkien” (ibid., p. 191).

57 De vita longa, Lib. I, ch. IX, ed. Bodenstein, p. 26.

58 Paragranum, p. 98.

59 Von dem Podagra (Huser, I), p. 541.

60 Lab. med., ch. IX (Huser, I), p. 277.

61 Archidoxis magicae, Lib. I (Huser, II), p. 546.

62 Paragranum, preface, p. 21.

63 G. Ebers, Papyros E. Das hermetische Buch über die Arzneimittel der alten Aegypter.

64 God loves the physician above all scholars. Therefore he should be truthful and not a “man of masks” (Paragranum, p. 95).

65 Lab. med., ch. VIII (Huser, I), p. 276.

66 Huser, I, p. 589ff.