The flamboyant physician, chemist, teacher and vagabond who called himself Paracelsus was born in Switzerland with the name Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim. His mother died when he was very young, and he moved to Villach in southern Austria with his impoverished physician, chemist father. As a bright young student he dreamed that he might some day discover how to transmute lead into gold, a long sought goal of the alchemists. He left home at the age of 14, and wandered through Europe visiting university after university. By the time he was 20, he is said to have attended the universities of Basel, Tübingen, Vienna, Wittenberg, Leipziq, Heidelberg and Cologne. He was highly critical of all of them. His opinions angered academics of his day, which is not hard to understand when it is noted that at one point he wrote that he wondered how "the high colleges managed to produce so many high asses."
In spite of his low regard for the universities of his day, he is said to have earned a baccalaureate in medicine from the University of Vienna in 1510 at the age of 17. He claimed to have earned a doctoral degree from the University of Ferrara in 1516, although this can not be verified because university records for that year are missing. He was pleased to find that authorities at that university were critical of the accepted medical teaching of the Greek scholar, Galen, and medieval Arab teachers such as Avicenna. He felt free to criticize the popular view that stars and planets had a controlling influence on the human body.
After taking his doctoral degree, he traveled extensively quickly wearing out his welcome at many of the universities of his day. His travels took him to England, Scotland, Ireland, Russia, Lithuania, Hungary, Italy, Egypt, Arabia, the Holy Land, and Constantinople. Everywhere he went he sought out practitioners of practical alchemy, in an effort to discover the most effective medical treatments for various disorders. He wrote "the universities do not teach all things, so a doctor must seek out old wives, gypsies, sorcerers, wandering tribes, old robbers, and such outlaws and take lessons from them." He began calling himself para-Celsus apparently because he considered himself superior to Celsus, a noted first century Roman physician. Celsus medical treatise De medicina was considered a classic, though it had been overlooked by his contemporaries in first century Rome. It was discovered by Pope Nicholas V (1397-1455) and was one of the first medical references published (1478) after the invention of the printing press. Thus Paracelsus was quite brash to place himself above this legendary figure.
When he returned home from his wandering in 1524 he found that his fame as a physician preceded him. Reports of his miraculous cures earned him a position as lecturer in medicine at the University of Basel. Students from all over Europe enrolled in his classes. When he advertised his classes with a public posting, and invited everyone, students and non-students alike, the authorities were enraged. Shortly thereafter, in the midst of cheering students, he burned the books of Avicenna and Galen in front of the university. Paracelsus stressed the importance of natural healing and railed against many of the popular methods of healing wounds, which he claimed prevented natural cures. He taught that nature would heal a wound by itself if infection were prevented
Ultimately, Paracelsus's outrageous behavior alienated nearly all of the authorities of his day, and he was forced to flee the University under threat to his life. In poverty, he wandered from place to place staying with friends, revising old manuscripts and writing new ones. In 1536 his efforts reached culmination with the publication of Der Grossen Wundartzney, a medical treatise that quickly restored and enhanced his reputation. His triumph was brief, however, as he died in 1541 under mysterious circumstances. It has been widely speculated that a jealous or offended colleague may have murdered him although no crime was ever proven.
Despite his difficult nature, Parcelsus's contributions to medicine were significant. He established a role for chemistry in medicine, introducing the use of chemicals rather than herbs for the treatment of disorders. For example, he wrote a definitive clinical description of syphilis and advocated treatment with measured doses of mercury compounds, a recommendation that preceded by many years a procedure that became standard medical practice in the early years of the twentieth century.
This is the complete article, containing 732 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
