The Swiss doctor and alchemist Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus (1493-1541) is noted for opposing Galen's medical theories and for founding medical chemistry.

The real name of Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus was Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. He was born in Einsiedeln. His father instructed him in Latin, botany, chemistry, and the history of religion. When Theophrastus was nine, his father was appointed town physician at Villach, and the boy attended the mining school there. For his secondary education he went to Basel. Through visits to Italy he learned of classical medical theory; after studies in the faculty of arts at the University of Vienna, he went back to Italy, receiving his doctorate in medicine from the University of Ferrara in 1515. During this Ferrara period he took the name Paracelsus.

Paracelsus resumed his study of metals briefly at Schwatz in the Tirol and then began a series of travels that lasted, almost...