BASILIO DE TELEPNEF

PARACELSUS
A GENIUS AMIDST A TROUBLED WORLD

A short essay on the life

and the main works of this great physician,

scientist and philosopher

Zollikofer & Co., Publishers, St.Gallen

Printed in Switzerland
Copyright by Zollikofer & Co., Publishers, St. Gallen, 1945
All rights reserved

This edition transcribed by

Paracelsus College
Institute of Parachemistry
Australia
© 2008
 DEDICATED

with affection and gratitude

to the great teacher and researcher

DR. J. STREBEL M. D.

Lucerne

and

to the

SWISS SOCIETY

OF THE FRIENDS OF PARACELSUS

at Einsiedeln
The following brief sketch is based on the latest research-work on Paracelsus, as embodied in the most
recent Swiss publication:

THEOPHRASTUS VON HOHENHEIM

GENANNT PARACELSUS

Samtliche Hauptwerke

Neu herausgegeben von Dr. J. Strebel — Band I

Verlag Zollikofer & Co., St.Gallen, 1944

containing important biographical notes and reproductions

of valuable original documents and letters.

The chief source for purposes of critical comparison and additional information has been formed by
Sudhoff’s indispensable edition:

THEOPHRAST VON HOHENHEIM

GENANNT PARACELSUS

Sàmtliche Werke

Herausgegeben von Karl Sudhoff

Verlag 0. W. Barth, R. Oldenbourg, MUnchen
Vierzehn Bände; 1922—1933

and the short biography, entitled:

PARACELSUS

ein Lebensbild aus den Tagen der Renaissance

von Karl Sudhoff

Bibliographisches Institut AG., Leipzig, 1936

Thanks to the Luzerner Kantonsbibliothek and Dr. J. Strebel’s courtesy several original editions of the
sixteenth century could be also consulted. There still remain, however, many obscure points in
Paracelsus’s biography and ample scope for research work for future enquirers into his life and
achievements.
 A FEW WORDS AS INTRODUCTION

WHO is Paracelsus? WHY should we read about him? Let us look up the Encyclopaedia
Britannica. Its fourteenth edition (1929—30) allocates to this Swiss physician and philosopher just half-
a-side of small print (Volume I 7th, page 251), wherein one reads about “his ignorance, his superstition
and his erroneous observations;” and “that it were questionable whether he (Paracelsus) had
introduced a single new truth into medicine ...”
Unfortunately, there is hardly any literature in the English-speaking world, which could throw a
clearer light on this extraordinary man’s life and achievements. In the following essay of my friend and
pupil, Basilio de Telepnef, the diligent research worker and well-known Paracelsist, an attempt is made
to present the great physician’s worldly career and—necessarily in part only—his doctrines and
medical activities.
What then is the truth about Paracelsus, as revealed by the intense research-work which has
been lately centred around this wizard, whom Shakespeare, Goethe and Novalis admired, whose will-
theory Schopenhauer quoted, who stood at the turning-point of the two great epochs—the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance?
It has been affirmed—and rightly so—that IN THE SCIENCE OF MEDICINE, unlike other
sciences, there has been no intermediary period: after the darkness of the Middle Ages (Galenism)
followed immediately—even if not recognized or appreciated at once by all— the clearness of
modern views and methods. For, in fact, it was Paracelsus who had boldly proclaimed—in the age
dominated by the commentators of Galen and Avicenna—that experience and observation were the
essentials of a physician’s curriculum, nearly a hundred years before the authoritative Lord of
Verulam did so.
It was Paracelsus who spoke of” the germs” of diseases like syphilis, pestilence, leprosy, etc.;
and who applied mineral and metallic substances for their cure—recipes, which the science of our day
highly appreciates. The actual founder of chemistry, he understood its application to medica1 purposes
and was in fact first to regulate the dosage of the most potent drugs.
It was Paracelsus too who had endeavoured to introduce the first notions of hygiene and miners-
welfare, who spoke in the modern terms of balneology, climatic influences, and of metabolism, the key-
stone to his extensive investigations of the so-called “tartaric” diseases; the vitamines were clearly
recognized by him. He tried to uplift the “surgeon’s métier,” then left to the barbers, shearers and
hangmen. Professor Sudhoff rightly considers Paracelsus’ works to be of incomparable value for the
furtherance of the world’s culture.
Here then, in brief words, is an outline of Paracelsus’ activities. The following biographical
sketch will no doubt fill a regrettable gap in English literature and help further to the rehabilitation of a
genius after centuries of misunderstanding, calumny and neglect.

J.STREBEL M.D

PARACELSUS was born on the 14th November 1493,1 St. Philip’s day according to the old
calendar, near Einsiedeln, in the canton of Schwyz, under the sturdy roof of a Swiss homestead, near
the so-called Devil’s Bridge, thrown over the swift river Sihl, on the pilgrims’ well-trodden road to
the great Benedictine Foundation and the miraculous shrine of Our Lady of Einsiedeln.
It was a great but troubled epoch, in which the old medieval order passed away to give place to a
newer outlook of man both on God and on his world, when the human mind became enlarged by the
opening of wider and freer horizons, unhampered by the rigid scholasticism and the unshakeable dogmas
of the feudal period.
America was discovered in 1492, and it was just in the year of grace I493, when Columbus
returned to Spain with his extraordinary, fantastic-sounding report. The world was first circumnavigated
by Magellan’s followers in 1521, and the East-Indian route problem solved by the intrepid Vasca da
Gama, who rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 5497.

Wider fields of God’s world were thus opened to the vision and study of the astounded medieval
man. On the intellectual plane a great and broadening impetus, felt already many years before those
striking geographical discoveries, led with a gathering force to a well nigh volcanic movement,
which swept away the shackles of Medievalism and broke through the limitations imposed on human
reason and human senses by the vanishing rigid order of the fading Middle Ages.
Suffice it here to recall its main phases: Humanism, the great Italian Renaissance, and the
German Reformation; the latter begun in 1517, was fated to split up not only the unity of Christendom,
but later also the unity of the European Continent, then still powerfully exemplified by the Holy Roman
Empire of the German Nation, of which the Emperor Charles V had become the visual symbol since
1519.
William von Hohenheim, the father of Philip — for so Paracelsus was named, probably
according to his birthday’s saint,—was an illegitimate off-spring of the ancient and noble Swabian
family originally known as Banbasts von Hohenhain, later corrupted into the Bombasts of Hohenheim.
Paracelsus’s grandfather, described as Ritter Georg von Hohenheim, had been a highly influential but
also a most impetuous Commander and Dispenser in the Order of the Knights of St. .John of Jerusalem.
He became known for his adventurous journey to the Holy Land in 1468; during his restless life he
visited also the Order’s charitable establishment at Bubikon, not very distant from Einsiedeln, the
future modest abode of his natural son Wilhelm who through the circumstances of his birth was
deprived both of the wealth and brilliancy of some career, proper to a bearer of the distinguished
name of Hohenheim. William was born at Rohrdorf near Nagold, not far from Stuttgart, anno
1457; as to his unknown mother a genealogical entry reads short and tersely: “Georg Commendator zuo
Rordorff et N. N. per plures annus ejus concubina.”
William von Hohenheim studied at the University of Tubingen and left it with the honourable
degree of a licentiate in medical sciences, an appropriate field of learning for anyone so closely
connected with the Order of the Hospitallers. William’s status in his native land, difficult as it might
have been before, apparently became untenable after 1489, when his natural father and protector was
called upon to atone before the High Court of Justice at Stuttgart for some heated and imprudent
words uttered in great anger during certain official sessions; soon afterwards we find the younger
Hohenheim settled down as a practising physician at the said Devil’s Bridge, one hour’s walk from the
famous Benedictine Abbey of Einsiedeln.
This quiet and unassuming man, an accomplished philosopher and a well-read scholar, interested
mostly in the study of “Nature’s mysteries and sciences”—far less in life’s worldly advantages—married
about 1491 a bondswoman of the Benedictine Foundation whose name, as it is more generally accepted
to-day, seems to have been Els Ochsner;2 it was then in a primitive, but solid homestead of some
peasants of Schwyz that his only and precocious child, Philip, saw light in November
1493. Among William Hohenheim’s favourite researches in the Etzel forests and Schwyzer valleys
was a diligent inquiry into the medical virtues and properties of plants, herbs and roots; his son—
destined to be initiated from earliest childhood into those “arcanas” or secrets of woods and meadows3
—was very fittingly, although to the neighbours’ great astonishment, baptized, following William’s
wish, Theophrastus, the name of the best-known ancient botanist of Greece, Aristotle’s beloved
pupil.4
The young mother died early. Her shape, in some vague way connected with the miraculous
image of Our Lady of Einsiedeln, remained for ever in Philip’s innermost memories. Hence—his
mystical inclinations, a tenderness and chastity of heart, surprising in a wandering doctor, which he was
to become one day. “The child’s mother is its planet and its ascendant,” wrote Paracelsus after many
troubled years of life’s bitter experience.
His father’s diligent researches into the mysteries of natural sciences, also the ever-present
example of the elder man’s unceasing and loving toil among the multifarious crowds of pilgrims and
other patients—as a skilful physician, a surgeon, and his own apothecary at the same time—impressed
vividly the boy’s receptive mind for the rest of his life. Paracelsus spoke gratefully of his father as
“his first teacher,” as one whose influence and memory “never left him”…
 Yet other and strong hereditary impulses were also engraved deeply into Philip’s character: his
grandfather’s impetuosity and unquiet wander-lust,5 and the rough fighting-spirit of his Schwyzer
ancestry! He fully recognized those ingrained features of his temperamental self and was the first
to establish in his works a clear notion of the laws of heredity.
The rough surroundings of his childhood and the humble manner of life at the Devil’s Bridge
also left a mark on the boy’s disposition. “What one has experienced in one’s childhood, sticks to one
all his life,” wrote Paracelsus in his later years and explained: “I am a Schwyzer by birth brought up
among the fir-cones, neither subtile nor superfine in my ways.”6
A melancholy trait should be added to all this. The Swabian war broke out in 1499; his father,
perhaps already a widower, then suddenly became “an alien of enemy origin,” lonely amidst the
warring Schwyzers. He must have been feeling his unfortunate position keenly—so much so, in fact,
that in 1502 he left the Schwyzer canton7 and, with his boy, proceeded on a weary journey to the
small Carinthian town of Villach, not long before ravaged during the Austro-Turkish combats.
It is, no doubt., a distant memory of those latter unfortunate days at Einsiedeln, that makes
Paracelsus exclaim so pathetically: “They are against me . . . because I am foreign, to them a new-comer,
. . . because I am German.”
The Benedictine Abbey held, however, its protecting hand over the forelorn couple of strangers;
its letters of recommendation very probably assisted the two wanderers on their way to Carinthia,
and helped William von Hohenheim in his installation at Villach.
This was Theophrast’s first journey—to be soon followed by so many others and far less pleasant
wanderings—and he seems to have retained deep in his heart the impressions of this voyage,
accomplished hand in hand with his attentive and observant father; for to his father he even attributed
once his love of travelling adventures. And no wonder: the well-instructed doctor could on their way
show and explain to his clever boy so much, both in the mineral world and in that of plants. It has been,
and probably with good reason, suggested8 that on their journey the Hohenheims stayed in the ancient
Benedictine abbey at Ragaz-Pfafers in the canton of St. Gall; there, in the romantic gorge of the river
Tamina, a saline spring was discovered in 1038, and a “bath-house” existed already in 1242.
It is perhaps during this early visit with his father to Pfäfers that Theophrast’s attention was first
drawn to the efficacy and astonishing qualities of mineral springs; in fact, he was destined to become
the originator of balneology in the modem sense of this science. He returned later, a far less happy
person than the small inquisitive boy of 1502, to the hospitable Pfafers-abbey and wrote a booklet, still
worth studying, on the properties of its famous spring …
And so the lonely but not unhappy couple arrived in the same year of grace 1502 at Villach.
William von Hohenheim settled down shortly after his arrival as a practising town-physician and,
in addition, as a teacher at the Villach mining school, belonging to the not distant mines of Doberatsch.
And thus he remained quietly for the next twelve years amidst his, books, his patients, and the school-
attendants, to die peacefully in 1534, highly esteemed by the Villach citizens and their counsellors for
his learning and probity.
The refining of metals—the main object of the Doberatsch-school tuition—and its accompanying
operations were then generally designated as “alchemical processes of separation and purification ;”
nowadays we should describe them quite aptly as rudiments of practical metallurgic knowledge. But
even as such they were of great use and significance for the development of young Philip’s mind and
inclinations. These rudiments were, moreover, very soon supplanted by still more practical experiences
and observations in Tyrolian mines and workshops (such as Sigmund Fuger’s9 at Schwaz).
Nor was the usual medieval “Latin” tuition, with its accompanying scholastic subjects of
instruction for young boys, neglected. The Benedictine fathers of the near Monastery of St. Paul at
Lavanttal—probably on the strength of the Einsiedeln recommendation—took care of Philip’s initial
education, which was further developed by other monastic colleges and clerical professors.
In this manner two new influences came early into Philip’s life—at Villach and during sojourns
amidst its immediate or more distant surroundings: the appreciation (for what it was worth) of scholastic
instruction and system, and—ah, so different, so much more lively!—the rich experience collected from
life itself, among Tyrolian mines and villagers. To this was added the knowledge of alchemical
processes and “spagyrical” notions acquired not only at the Villach mining school, but more
thoroughly and more scholarly in the secluded laboratories of learned Carinthian monks, the custodians
of ancient books and learning.
The age of fourteen was fast approaching. And it was in those days an age when in many
Imperial cities such hardly grown-up lads were supposed to have become their respective “full-blown”
burghers, with all the privileges and responsibilities appertaining to a citizen; in fact, eager tax-collectors
were then already busy entering their names oil the taxpayers’ lists! . . . Those were rough times and
youth matured quickly. The same may be said of university students; so the old statutes of the medical
faculty at Salerno determined, for instance, that 14 was the age when a boy preparing for the medical
vocation had to begin with his preliminary studies, those of the “Arts and Sciences.” These studies, in
what we should call “liberal sciences,” were continued for three years; then an examination took place,
and, if successful, the degree of a bachelor of science10 was conferred. And this is, what apparently,
according to the law and custom of the day, happened forthwith to Philip.
There is however one point to be remembered in this connection. William, observing the
inquisitive and practical turn of the boy’s mind, may have contemplated a different line of instruction
and of future activities for his son; otherwise, why should he have put him through those practical
experiences in the rough Tyrolian mines and workshops, that were not at all necessary or usual for a
future scholar and doctor? However, an event of some importance in the social life of the sleepy
Carinthian town had at last turned the scales: the arrival at Villach, in or about 1507, of an elegant and
learned young man, widely known as Vadianus.11
This brilliant scholar, the future rector of the Vienna university and later the influential town-
physician, mayor and reformer of his native town of St. Gall, widely travelled, almost a celebrity
among the learned congregations of the humanists, well-versed in the affairs and opportunities of the
German universities, was undoubtedly the best man to advise the modest William von Hohenheim
on his boy’s career, to provide him with useful information, and young Theophrastus, if needs be, with
letters of introduction. Vadian’s example and word possibly determined the senior Hohenheim to let his
son follow a similar worthy course and learned way to the university honours. For all points to the fact
that it was in this same year of 1507, that Theophrastus left his father’s somber though commodious
house at Villach, his father’s ample library and never wearying instruction in philosophy and
medicine—in order to begin, this time alone, his first long journey, that of a traveling student, a well-
known figure on the roads and in the taverns of those days.
This was in fact a usual part of the curriculum during that era, when the universality of learning
and hospitality for budding scholars, who wandered over the whole continent in search of knowledge,
assured their progress and means of travelling.
In every university college the doors stood widely open to a young scholar desirous of instruction
and promotion; among the students of the same nationality, mostly organized in distinct “houses,” he
could find accommodation and support. River-traffic and postal routes, with horses ready for speedy
travel, provided modes of movement that were healthier and much quicker than one is apt to think. The
leisurely way of traveling on foot through “vales and hills” suited the particular mind of our journeyman;
for Theophrastus was interested not in the universities alone: no experience, no instruction, where ever
and by whom it was procured, were disdained by that boy who was endowed with high gifts of
perception and observation.
Thus about 1507 was terminated the period of Philip’s early studies and first practical lessons;
and this is what he says of his initial teachers and experiences: “After him (William von Hohenheim)
came a great number of further instructors, all of whom I could not well record here; and besides -
writings old and new, of all kinds. Such scholars as Bishop Scheit of Settgach, Bishop Erhart and the
fathers of Lavanttal, Bishop Nicholas of Yppon, Bishop Matthew Schacht, Suffragan of Freisingen, and
several abbots took great pains with me; thus, the abbot of Spanheim12 and some others, also many
doctors and the like of them. In this manner much knowledge was gathered, and afterwards further
experience gained during some length of time among the alchemists and inquirers into that art; such as
namely the noble and stead-fast Sigmund Fuger of Schwaz and the great number of distillers (or
‘spagyrists’) employed by him.”13
In the preface to his Great Surgery-book of 1536 Paracelsus depicts the course of his later
studies, beginning with the important statement:
“And thus I have been studying for many long years in the universities of the Germans . . .”14
This period of extensive studies at the German universities probably embraces the whole of the
five years between the end of 1507 and the later part of 1512.15 It begins with a short course at the
university of Tubingen, his father’s alma mater; then via Heidelberg, Mainz and Treves, Theophrastus
reaches Cologne where he makes a more protracted stay. He passes through Freibourg, in the Black
Forest, a university known for its gay and rough life, in Paracelsus’s words, “like a house of indecency.”
Then he visits the ultra-catholic college of Ingolstadt, in Paracelsus’s characteristic phrase—” a
university of some old scholastics;” afterwards Munich’s seat of learning and at last, presumably as early
as the middle of 1509, if not before, arrives at Vienna. He studies at the famous university of Vienna
(founded in 1365) well up to the second half of 1511; he then passes, as his own references seem to
show conclusively enough, the Bachelor-examination obtaining his first university degree, essential to
his future medical career, at the hands of Vienna’s faculty of Arts.16
Late in summer 1511 he leaves Vienna, then a sad city infested with the plague, and travelling
through Bohemia, he reaches, early in 1512, Wittenberg, where Luther at that time—five years before
the first open act of the Reformation—teaches as a professor of theology. Theophrastus then proceeds to
Leipsic, and, on his return-journey to his father’s place at Villach, travels through the precincts of Elfurt
whose university was an active centre of Humanism.
Always a keen observer of men and customs, ever on the alert for new medical discoveries and
fresh experiences, he passes during this “tour des universités” through many other cities, not adorned
with the presence of learned professors, and through many humble inns and hamlets. He builds up
steady friendships at Strasbourg and Colmar, and is perhaps most impressed by the busy town of
Frankfort-on-Main in fact, as he once put it, “there was more to be learnt at a Frankfort fair than in many
a German University.”
Theophrastus is disappointed by the German universities and their scholastic methods of
teaching, so far remote from the experiences and actualities of life. Their doctors seem to him, who
was since his very childhood accustomed to his father’s practical and helping activities among the
sick of Einsiedeln and Villach, but “sham-physicians.” They know to perfection how to wear the solemn
doctor’s garbs and how to shine among the ignorants, “like dirt in a lantern ;“ yet, as regards their
hapless patients,—alas, “the slaughter they achieve among the sick is worse than that done by a
warrior in his trenches.” He wondered altogether how it was, that “the higher colleges managed to
produce so many high asses. . .”
Enriched with new facts and observations, sarcastic but not yet embittered, the young Bachelor
of Arts returns towards the end of 1512 to his father’s peaceful home at Villach. Well, he is no
longer a mere botanist, nor just another “Theophrastus;” for his father he is from now on also an
“Aureolus “—the author of a medical compendium17 of the third century known under that name—who,
just as his son, showed a remarkable store of practical knowledge, far different from Galenic abstract
compositions. This work, forgotten during the Middle Ages, became popular at the birth of Humanism
and thus, no doubt, easily found its way into William’s library at Villach. A suitable appellation for the
young scholar!18 An interplay of meanings, words and names, so dearly loved by humanists.
After a short consultation with his father the young scholar left the paternal home once again—
this time for a still longer period—for a “peregrination” which had to last more than 12 years and
embraced not only Europe but also touched on the African and Arabian borders.19 During this great
voyage, which was a large sweeping circle around the old continent, Hohenheim achieved—during its
early stages—his doctorate, then wandered further in the search of greater and more practical
knowledge: a forerunner of the Swiss Red Cross-doctors, he travelled far and wide seeking out the
terrors and sufferings of warring humanity, and brought skilful help to those who on the fields of battle
needed it the most; also, where amidst terrific apparitions of men at arms, down-trodden wounded, and
plague-stricken multitudes, a fearless doctor could observe, note and learn.
The beginning of Paracelsus’s great “peregrination”20 coincided with an important historical
event—an event, which, no doubt, both determined and facilitated the initial phase of his travels. In
December 1512, Maximilian Sforza made his triumphal entry into Milan, restored to him thanks mainly
to the exploits of his Swiss allies, or, as a contemporary puts it, “through the Swytzers’ might and
favour.” The whole of Lombardy had been overrun by the valiant Swiss soldiers and their allies, the
Emperor’s troops. Thus, an easy and safe route was opened for the young student: across the
Brennerpass, and through Boizano, Trento and Verona, to Milan; thence, following roads and towns held
by Swiss garrisons, via Pavia, Mantua, and Padua; at last, to Ferrara where he arrived some time in
1513.
Hohenheim studied at the celebrated Ferrarian university, founded in 1264, until late into 1515,
and in this flourishing city of the Italian Renaissance, centred in the brilliant court of the ruling Duke
Alphonso I, of the resplendent house of Este, patron of sciences and arts, husband of Lucrecia Borgia, a
friend of Ariosto-the honour of the doctor's degree was conferred on 22 year old Theophrastus by the
aged humanist Dr. Leoniceno .21
It was at Ferrara-as it is agreed in most of the recent research work-that Hohenheim had assumed the
now famous surname of Paracelsus after having attained the full doctor's dignity;22 such procedure was
fashionable among the humanist scholars of those days, but the choice of that remarkable appellation
deserves even in this short essay a few explanatory words.
Cornelius Celsius, a Roman patrician, lived some time in the first century of our era; he studied
medicine as one of the important branches of general knowledge. His well-known dissertation “DE
MEDICINA" presented in fact one of a series of treatises intended to embrace all the learned instruction
which a truly educated man of the world should possess. At one time he was utterly forgotten; his work
became, however, widely known, when in the 15th century his writings were "re-discovered" in
manuscript by some early humanists and then committed to the press. At Ferrara Celsius's work,
admired by many also for its original and bold style, would be, no doubt, easily accessible for
Hohenheim's perusal; and thus in a moment of proud vision of his future life-aims he chose the fitting
signature of a Para-Celsus, of one advancing farther and beyond the ancient Celsus’s learning and world-
conception.23
Now the young doctor’s title was completed: Aureolus Philippus Banbast von Hohenhain
(rendered as Bombast von Hohenheim), surnamed Paracelsus ; and, strangely enough, therein appeared
the outlines of his entire life of wandering and studies already traced: from Greek wisdom
(Theophrastus) to Roman science (Aureolus) and on to general knowledge (Celsus); from Switzerland
(Philip) to Germanic countries (Hohenheim) and, finally, to works beyond the comprehension of the
learned of his and many future centuries.
In the third treatise of the 2nd part of his Great Surgery book and in the preface to his treatise on
hospitals, Paracelsus, in a few bold strokes, depicts the whole course of his studies before the beginning
of his actual practice as a physician and surgeon at Salzburg about the end of 1524,; first, from 2 to 3
years of university-studies, then examination and the degree of a Bachelor of Arts (Vienna); secondly,
further 2 to 3 years at some other university and a doctor’s degree (Ferrara) ; thirdly—in order to
become a real and useful physician—a “perambulation”
across near and distant countries in the search of practical knowledge and widespread experience.
The long “perambulation” began immediately after Ferrara and the doctor’s honours. History
helped him once more. In September 1515 the Marignano battle was fought; the Swiss were defeated
and—although covered with glory for their steadfastness and bravery—their influence in greater
European politics finished; their renowned soldiers, and among them surgeons as well, were dispersed
but sought after as reliable mercenaries in most European armies. Thus, early in 1516, roads to farther
lands and still remoter horizons stood widely open to a “neutral” scholar and travelling physician of
Swiss origin and birth.
He travelled from Ferrara to Bologna, another centre of humanistic learning, with a university
established in 1119.
Then came Florence, the magnificent city of the Medici; Siena, Rome; Cicero’s birth-place,
Arpinum; Capua and Naples, full of Spanish soldiers and mercenary troops, where the young doctor
made his first observations of the scourge of that time—a particularly virulent form of the “French
disease,”24 which later on were to serve for his remarkable studies of that dreaded foe of ignorant crowds
and as ignorant physicians of his days.
Salerno’s famous medical school was Hohenheim’s next visit; in Sicily he made many curious
notes and deductions concerning its “fire-mountain,” Aetna, and thence, on the usual sea-route, got to
Liguria and its great port and capital, Genua; further on via Marseilles—to Montpellier, which in the
Middle Ages was chiefly known as a celebrated university, founded in 1289 and noted for its faculty of
medicine.
He then, most probably, followed along the Mediterranean coast the ancient Roman highway,
which by the Eastern pass of the Pyrenees at Puigcerda linked up the Southern France with Catalonia,
and reached late in 1517 or in the first months of 1518 the lively port and university town of Barcelona;
shortly afterwards the ancient Phoenician foundation and Spanish military harbour, Cartagena, in
Murcia.
An adventurous journey to “Barbary” in a Spanish galley with Spanish troops from Cartagena
to Oran and thence to Algeria brought him, it would seem, his first immediate experiences as a
military surgeon and physician—in a campaign under the Marquis de Gomarez against the Sultan
of Algiers. The campaign began in 1517, and in 1518 the Sultan was captured and beheaded by the
Spanish. The battle of Algeria did not finish with this tragic event, but many- regiments were shipped
back to Spain through Almeria and other near-lying ports, thus giving the young physician a good
opportunity of continuing his voyage, with other soldiers, to Granada, which had been liberated
from the Moors in I492.25
He pushed on to Cordoba and travelled through Andalusia, visiting Sevilla’s ancient university.
His gaze was, however, already directed towards Portugal and its boisterous capital, Lisbon, the
gate to the New World, the starting point for new adventurous sea-routes and the home of bold
discoveries. He “wandered” through Lusitania, saw Lisbon, and finally directed his steps to the great
centre of medieval pilgrimage, Santiago de Compostella.26
During his second Spanish voyage Hohenheim visited Leon, a city known for its learning;
Salamanca’s famous university, founded about 1230, where Columbus had once lectured on his
discoveries; another old-Castilian university town, Valladolid, and “the city of soothsayers and
astrologers,” Saragossa. From these he pushed on through the town of Jaca in Aragon and the
Pyrenees’ middle-pass towards the Kingdom of France, first paying a visit to the former stronghold
of the Albigenses, the old and stormy centre of art and learning, Toulouse.
In Paris Hohenheim’s medical views and new methods, in spite of the astonishing cures, found
the strongest opposition and animosity on the side of the influential /Sorbonne-doctors, who were averse
to all innovations.
“Parisian learned doctors,” wrote Paracelsus later on, “despise all others and yet are nothing but
utter ignoramuses themselves; they think that their long necks and high judgment reach right unto
heaven.”27
He summed up about the same time in hard, but well-fitting sober words his impressions of the
European “high schools” and their doctors: “They know not what experimentum means, and how
experiments are made, neither their origin nor theory. Italy, Gallia, Hispania, and Germania. . . have
wrong practices.”28
He soon shook off the Sorbonne’s stifling dust of medieval books and rules; on a breezy day,
travelling via Calais, which then was still English (a short peace-period reigned between the English
kingdom and France in those years of grace 1518 to 1519), Hohenheim embarked for Dover’s chalky
rocks and went to London.
He described the stormy waves and seas as ”tempestuous and mighty like earth in its quakes,”
and, that is more, wrote down for his fellow-passengers the first recipe against sea-sickness! “Take that
physic, and you won’t be vomiting whilst on the high seas,” wrote Paracelsus thereof in his usual
blunt manner.29 He called it aptly “Sal peregrinorum.”
After “some wanderings” in England—perhaps visiting also the ancient tin-mines of Cornwall—
Paracelsus passed on to Ireland (Hibernia) and to Scotland, from where, there being for a time a truce
in Anglo-Scottish hostilities, he returned safely via York to London.
It is curious that whilst in England he seems to have become much interested in English cloth
and highly estimated its “unsurpassable” quality;30 it is noteworthy too that from London he sailed,
as it appears, directly to Bruges, the great wool and cloth trading centre during the Middle Ages,
where already in 1430 Philip the Good of Burgundy had founded the coveted Order of the Golden
Fleece.
During this part of his journey, probably the days of disappointment in medicine and medical
men after his Parisian experiences, he may have also come into contact with Hanseatic merchants and
thus facilitated much of his journeying on the North- and Baltic seas.
Paracelsus traversed Flanders, the provinces of Hainaut and Brabant, visiting Louvain and its
renowned university, and pushed on to Antwerp.
From that prosperous Schelde port, since the transfer in 1490 of the foreign guilds from Bruges
to Antwerp, the most important commercial city in Europe, the untiring traveller crossed to Zealand~
a part of the old County of Holland, and there soon became embroiled, as a military surgeon, in the
“Netherlandish wars” of the fateful year 1519. In January of that year Maximilian I German King and
Roman Emperor, died. The consequences were election-intrigues and armed disputes among the
adherents of the candidates to the vacant throne, for which Francis I, King of France, was making a
strong, though unsuccessful bid, and to which Maximilian’s grandson Charles V 31 finally succeeded.
The Duke of Guelderland (or Geldern)32 who had already challenged Maximilian’s suzerainty once, an
enemy of the so-called Burgundian heirs and Charles V, plunged some parts of the Netherlands, during
the unsettled election-period, into a civil war, his horsemen descending upon the loyal cities and
plundering far and wide; under his exertions Friesland 33 also turned against the Burgundian heirs and an
open rebellion broke out.
There appears to be little doubt, on which side—probably quite accidentally—Hohenheim’s
services became engaged; for, apart from Deventer and Zwolle, only Geldern and Friesland are
mentioned by him. According to his own statement “the Netherlanders did not like him,”34 and he seems
to have been forced to leave Dutch provinces rather hurriedly.
The next mile-stones of the long “tour d’Europe” were three flourishing Hanseatic towns—
Hamburg, Lübeck and Rostock35 From Rostock his way led him to Denmark and its capital,
Copenhagen, where he arrived some time in the latter months of 1519.
Copenhagen outwardly presents the most brilliant point of Hohenheim’s great wandering.
Paracelsus found protectors and favour at the Danish court of King Christian II.36 He was appointed—
so it is reported—court-physician;37 moreover a thorough reorganisation of Danish apothecaries shops
was apparently entrusted to him as well. At the beginning of 1520 he accompanied the king and his
troops, as military surgeon, during the short but successful Swedish campaign, which ended with the
siege and occupation of Stockholm; his protector, Christian II, was proclaimed King of Sweden, and
Paracelsus, as tradition has it, was rewarded for his outstanding medical services with a gold-chain and
high honours. In fact, there exists “a portrait of Paracelsus” wearing that distinguished chain of gold and
looking very handsome and impressive; the authenticity of the “portrait” is, however, still much
doubted.
Paracelsus undertook whilst in Sweden (with the king’s name to help him on the way), besides
visiting the Swedish university at Upsala, a journey to the Falun copper-mines and further on to the
mysterious North in search of those riches and treasures, which were then already believed to be lying
“under ice and snow, in the regions of the Midnight-sun.”
When Paracelsus returned to Stockholm, things were changed; the Swedish capital, the recent
scene of the massacre of its best nobles and chief officials by King Christian’s henchmen,38 was in open
revolt. Paracelsus, a favourite of the now departed and hated Danish court, had hardly any time to lose; it
was autumn 1520, but the Hansa Baltic route from Stockholm to Libau,39 the ancient Lyra Portus of
Livonian knights, stood open, and soon he found himself carried across the stormy waves of the Baltic
into the safety of that harbour, a stronghold of the Brothers of the Sword (then already merged into the
Knighthood of the Teutonic Order), also closely related to other knightly orders, familiar to one of
Hohenheim’s descent.
However, he lost no time and sailed to Stettin, the ancient city of the Hanseatic-League, and
capital of Pomerania.
He skirted along the old mark of Brandenburg, but the real immediate aim of his journey seemed
to be—perhaps, since Courland—the region of Danzig, then de facto an independent and prosperous
little republic, although nominally under the kings of Poland. It was just at that time, late in 1520, that a
bold attempt was made by some troops of the Teutonic Order to capture the port of Danzig; the Grand
Master himself was prudently not present at the battle,40 but negotiated busily a military alliance with the
envoys of the Grand Duke Vassily III, who—the Tatar yoke being thrown over by his father Iwan III41—
already styled himself “Ruler of all Russias” and stretched out his hands towards the adjoining
Lithuanian and Polish border estates. The Grand-Duke, a quiet and cautious prince,42 promised the
Knights of the Teutonic Order his alliance and military assistance against the Poles in the case of an
initial success of the Knights at Danzig. The defenders of Danzig fought bravely and the attempt failed,
as all other enterprises of the Grand Master did in those critical days.
This unfortunate expedition had, however, great consequences for our traveller, who, it would
seem, proceeded from Danzig with the retiring Teutonic Knights to Prussia and reached Konigsberg,43
the seat of the Grandmasters from 1457 to 1525. The Grand Duke’s envoys at Konigsberg had also
another important mission from the Muscovite court in hand, besides Vassily’s political intrigues.
Moscow, retarded in its cultural development by the long years of servitude to the Mongolian hordes,
was now eager to learn from the more fortunate peoples of Western Europe; the Grand Duke’s
emissaries were accordingly ordered to invite, and to bring safely to the seat of the Muscovites,
prominent Western men of learning, particularly architects and physicians. Liberal money-rewards and
safe-conducts under the guidance of prominent Moscow grandees were promised, and a good reception
at the Russian court awaited noted representatives of Western arts and sciences. With them came many
charlatans and adventurers attracted by rich presents, but the majority were men of genuine scholarship
and fame, like Paracelsus eager for new experiences and wider fields of action.
And thus we find some time in those wintry months of 1520/1521 our keen traveller, well
wrapped up in Russian furs—a customary advance- present from the Grand-Duke—passing in swift
sledges via Vilna,44 which then belonged to the Lithuanian Grandduchy, through Smolensk, which
had been occupied by Russian troops since 1514, and further on to Holy Russia and its semi-oriental
metropolis.
In later life Paracelsus attached great importance to his visit to the Moscow court and to the ex-
periences gathered during this truly adventurous journey. Not long after the great “wander-years,”
turning derisively to his calumniators, he wrote In scorn: “What do all of you know: neither goose
nor goat! Go first to the fair at Frankfort, then learn what is going on at St. Jakob’s of the dark
stars45 and visit the seat of the Muscovites,46 and, after you have done all that, then may you judge,
what a physician I am.47
His capture by the Tatars and the short time of this captivity48 on his journey from Moscow to the
Southern borders of Lithuania also appear to have made a great impression on Paracelsus’s mind.
The Tatars were then still roaming over the wide steppes of Southern Russia and the Ukraine
and their horsemen even reached the river Oka and its confluence with the Volga at Nijni-Novgorod;
they would sometimes follow the Oka’s upper course as far as the shores of its tributary, the
Moskva river, and the latter to the capital itself, thus causing terrible inroads and devastations in
the domains of the Moscow princes. A series of such raids on a great scale were undertaken by the
Tatars and their allies just in the year of grace 1520 and in 1521; Russian contemporary annals speak
with awe of this invasion—towns were plundered, villages burnt, their populations were made prisoners
and driven away as slaves into the remotest steppes; Nijni-Novgorod was besieged, Moscow
reached, all its suburbs burnt and their inhabitants, together with rich booty, carried away by the wild
riders. It is in one of the Moscow suburbs, assigned to most of the foreigners—their intimate mixing
with ordinary citizens was not deemed wise—that Paracelsus would have to stay whilst at Vassily’s
metropolis; the savage raid of the Tatars, no doubt, brought about the end of this Moscow sojourn and
determined the direction of his further adventures in Eastern Europe.
Paracelsus himself apparently regarded this hazardous deviation from his route as a distinct
hint of Providence and used his great gifts as a physician and healer among his captors “to the
glory of the true God.”49 “Wonderous things happen in this world,” he wrote, when “a man of
Swabia brings physics and experiments right up to the Tatars.”50 According to the Tatarian
customs—observed by the Russian Tatars as late as the nineteenth century—a true healer was
regarded as a holy man, free to go and to leave as he wished. In his nine books “de Natura rerum”51
Paracelsus, among other references to the Tatar customs, also mentions the distinction which the
Tatars used among their prisoners according to the latter’s’ character and abilities.
A sharp and quick observer, he made some remarkable discoveries amidst his Mongolian hosts—
observations which left unmistakable traces even in the writings of his mature age. He was, for instance,
struck by the powerful effects which “faith and imagination,”52 used by their healers for curative
purposes, produced on the sick Tatars; this initial observation, later developed by Paracelsus into an
important part of his doctrine and medical instructions, led to his exposition of curative processes which
foreshadowed the modern methods of hypnotism and suggestion. Moreover, the science of
“physiognomy,”53 the ability of judging “inner virtues” from external features, was highly esteemed by
the Tatars. This art, beginning with the human face and leading downwards to plants and minerals, had
been carefully noted by Paracelsus and, increased by further observation—particularly with regard to
medicinal herbs and roots—laid the foundation of his studious treatises on “the signature of things.” In
this we discover, among other suggestive statements, clear indications of some of the present-day
homoeopathic principles.54
Certain curious remarks in Paracelsus’s writings (some not unlike the teachings of modern spiritualism)
convey the impression that he had become "initiated" into the mysteries of shamanism. Although the
Tatars had then long abandoned their ancestral shamanism for Mahommedanism, in the quiet of their
steppes they still preserved their aboriginal shamanistic practices and held in veneration the shamans
(the medicine-men) whose soothsaying and exorcising were supposed to be aided by the spirits of their
departed ancestors; a secret knowledge of the hidden virtues of roots and herbs was also ascribed to
those "spiritual healers."
For a captive like Paracelsus, regarded more as an honoured guest, 55 an escape could not have been
difficult. He would, most probably, have been allowed-if he so wished-to return, without hindrance, to
his native "lands of the setting sun." On the other hand, he might have been released by Polish horsemen
during one of their frequent skirmishes with the Tatars on the ill-defined Southeastern frontiers of
Poland and Lithuania, then virtually forming already a united realm. The knowledge of the Polish
language, which-besides that of several other ancient and contemporary idioms56 -Paracelsus possessed,
undoubtedly, proved most helpful to him during this Eastern adventure.
And so he proceeded westwards through the Lithuanian domains, probably via Kief, Lithuania's old
capital, and further on through Polish lands, reaching in due course the Hungarian border; then,
according to his narrative he reached Siebenburgen, Walachia and Slavonia;57 passing afterwards
through Croatia with its coastal town Zengg and the Windische Mark or Kraine, where he visited the
rich quicksilver mines of Idria. He arrived at Venice some time in 1521.
In fact, he mostly followed the military frontier, then established by Western Christendom
against Turkish aggression, the citadel of Zengg being its far advanced, last bastion …
On his tour through Hungary and Walachia Paracelsus was greatly plagued with lice and he
left for the benefit of other travellers in those regions a prescription, the first kind of modern “Keating’s
Powder.”
It seems probable that Paracelsus, together with other Swiss comrades and adventurers,
accompanied—as a military surgeon once again—for a short time the Venetian auxiliary troops which
were hired for the Emperor’s enemy, François I, King of France, during the Franco-Italian campaign of
September 1521. Some of his former fellow-students from Ferrara joined in, as the Duke of Ferrara was
on the Venetian side this time. However, he left this new soldierly venture quite soon, perhaps not
wanting to serve against the Emperor. He then roamed for a while over Italy, directing his steps towards
Loreto in the province of Ancona, which was then as now one of the leading places for pilgrimages for
all faithful Catholics. In the Middle Ages those who undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land first
visited, at Loreto, the Holy House, in which the Virgin Mary was said to have lived when at Nazareth,
and which, according to the legend, was carried by angels from Galilee to Dalmatia, and thence to its site
at Loreto. A first stage on Hohenheim’s long journey to the Holy Land and its former deliverers in his
grandfather’s steps!
He wandered through Apulia and from Tarentum took a ship for the Peloponnes and Messene, a
Venetian dependence on its south-western coast. As a ship-surgeon he would easily find a passage in a
Venetian boat to Crete, another Venetian possession, and from there—the usual maritime route of the
Venetians—to Alexandria.58 As the legend has it, it was here that Paracelsus became acquainted with the
secret teachings of traditional neo-Platonic and Gnostic schools, by some believed to have been kept in
existence at Alexandria since the early Christian ages. He speaks, however only of the Alexandrian
physicians and their medical science.59
Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that he does speak of certain “magical instructions” he learnt while
in Egypt.60 From Alexandria he mainly followed the old Venetian trade-route which led him up the
Nile to Cairo, the city of the Mamelukes,61 an to the borders of the old Aethiopian kingdom at the
great trading-station on the right bank of the Nile, near to the first cataract, the ancient Syene, now
called Assuan.62
There are many and remarkable observations referring to this African journey which are
dispersed in Paracelsus’s writings. As always, his first concern is with the medical men of the traversed
country and the special physics used by them; thus he describes the “Nile-physicians” and their cures;63
the river Nile, its “waters” and “airs” (meaning its climatic conditions), even the crocodiles and
monsters—probably hippopotami—encountered there. For, says he: “In Africa there are monsters, which
forsooth are so dreadful of aspect that, instead of travelling further, thou wouldst like to creep again into
thy mother’s lap.64
As the first physician-climatologist, Paracelsus is much interested in the Aethiopian climate and
its heat, so different from the German conditions;65 and in fact, recommends that every physician should
gather his experience not only in Europe but also “seek it out in the African regions, wandering there in
the sweat of his brow.”66 The latter part is probably meant in its literal sense!
“A physician should know as well, what kind of diseases there are to be met with in Arabia,” he
writes in another treatise67 and makes further remarks concerning his passing visit to Arabia on
his way from Egypt to the Holy Land.
Possibly, he followed the customary trade and pilgrim-route by sea and caravan, via the gulf of
Akabah68 and the so-called Arabian valley, a caravan-trail bringing the travellers into the Palestinian
regions and to Jerusalem. In fact, he does speak of galleys and the Red Sea.
Paracelsus found the Holy City in ruins.69 He observed, of course, the Judean physicians and
their medicines—qualifying the latter as similar to European physics—and seems to have carried away
a very poor impression of the motley crowds of Palestine and Syria. In Judea he made some important
time-observations, from which he concluded on the hour-differences between the Oriental and Western
days and nights.70
Then, probably in Akka, the pilgrim’s landing-place and the former headquarters of the Teutonic
Order, Hohenheim embarked for the isle of Cyprus,71 a Venetian possession in those days, and from
there together with other adventurous Christians, to Rhodes, severely pressed by the Turkish fleet. A
tragic and heroic era for its valiant knights: the years of 1521 and I522.
Hohenheim tells us about the famous siege of the Knights’ Rhodesian stronghold by Suleiman II
and its fall.72 Amidst the fears and sufferings of those grim months of struggle he watched, unmoved, the
wounded and the sick, cured their ailments, discovered new kinds of malicious fever, and made careful
notes of effective cures and physics; finally he escaped to the island of Kos, which in 1522 was still a
possession of the Knights of St.John
On that island, the birth-place of Hippocrates, he felt very happy after the tumult and clashing of
arms at Rhodes. Among other less known Sporades he visited the island of Samos, said to be the birth-
place of Pythagoras, and sailed on to the Cyclades,73 which were then held by his old friends, the
Venetians.
Athens, although under Turkish domination, irresistibly attracted the bold traveller; apart from
the Greek capital, the site of the Apollo temple at Delphi seems also to have been visited by Paracelsus
during this rapid voyage.74
By way of the great island of Lesbos, now called Mitylene, where at the city of Eresus circa 372
B.C. the other, ancient Theophrastus had been born,75 and passing by Lemnos, surnamed “the key to the
Hellespont,” Paracelsus finally landed at Constantinople. Here—as the legend has it—he succeeded in
obtaining from some Greek alchemists the genuine recipes for the preparation of the philosopher’s stone
and of various marvelous elixirs.76
A perilous journey followed, which led him sometimes through wild and dangerous mountain-
passes, on tracks far remote from civilized habitation. Strangely enough, it looks as if he were in part
retracing the steps and hazardous trails of the first Christian missionaries. He thus passed through
Thracia, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania,77 possibly touching on Herzegovina;78 at last, he alighted
once again among his Venetian protectors in Dalmatia; by way of Istria he reached the great metropolis
of the Venetian Republic in the year of grace 1523.
Distant memories of those perils and discomforts are vividly reflected in his narrative at the
beginning of the “Archidoxorum.”79 “Sometimes we remember, dear filii, our plight and loneliness, the
miserable inns, hunger, and so much poverty around us . . ., miseries and calamities, which surrounded
us . . .“
Venice in 1523! The bitter struggle between the German Emperor and the French king continues;
the Franco-Italian war flares up, and Northern Italy shudders under the tramp of foreign soldiers. The
Venetians march with the Emperor’s troops this time.
Much horror and rough deeds must have been witnessed by the young surgeon among the
mercenaries and the wild soldiery of those days. He was already on his later journey-stages in the
direction of Villach, when a dramatic episode occurred in a suspicious inn at Friaul (Udine):
“There, at Friaul, I saw how (in a soldier’s brawl) at a public house a man’s whole ear was
chopped off; a barber came and stuck it on again with some mason’s paste . . . but the ear soon fell
off again, dripping with blood and matter . . .“80
In the first half of 1524 he was back at Villach in his father’s quiet, unchanging home.
To conclude this important and perhaps most significant period of Paracelsus’s life, we quote
once more from his writings.
From the preface to the first tract of the Great Surgery-book (1536):
“And thus I began to learn—for many years in the universities of Germany, of Italy, and of
France, seeking out the true foundation of medicine. I was not content with their teachings, nor with
writings and books, and wandered further towards Granada, Lisbon, through Spain, through England,
through Brandenburg, through Prussia; through Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Walachia, Transylvania
(Siebenburgen), Croatia, also Kraine (Windische Mark), and through other lands besides, which it is not
necessary to recount here. And in all those countries and places I was diligently investigating and
enquiring into the certain and true art of medicine. This I tried out not only with learned doctors, but also
at the hands of barbers, bath-keepers or shearers, and with experienced surgeons; even with old women,
with necromancers, . . . with the alchemists and in monasteries; with the nobles and with the common
people, with the cleverest and with simpletons.”
And from the “Infirmary-book” (1529)
“Excellent and great knowledge and experience I have gathered in the Low Countries (the
Netherlands); in the Romans’ land (Central Italy), then at Naples; in the Venetian, Danish and
Netherlandish wars, not to speak of others, and restored everywhere the sick to health . . . The skill and
practice which I have acquired with much diligence and brought back with me, from Lithuania, Holland,
Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, Rhodes, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, England, Denmark, and all the
Germanic lands..
Villach in the first half of 1524—As Hohenheim’s careful biographer, Sudhoff, puts it:
“After a short time of rest and a thorough discussion with his father at Villach, the tireless one
was already on his way northwards, and soon thereafter, August 1524, settled down at Salzburg.”
In accordance with Paracelsus’s own words (Philosophia magna):
“Wouldst thou be a master? First, be a baccalaureate, then a doctor, then become an experienced
and learned man, so canst thou settle down to the benefit of the sick as a medical practitioner.”
However, Paracelsus left Salzburg already in May 1525. His friendliness towards the common
and poor people, his readiness to assist all the sick and wounded, without caring about their political
creed, made the young physician highly suspicious in the eyes of the Salzburg authorities. Paracelsus
was arrested and accused of being in active sympathy with the rebellious peasants; although nothing
could be proved against him, his further stay at Salzburg became unpleasant, if not impossible, and with
but scanty luggage, he proceeded westwards.
Passing by way of Munich, Paracelsus once again reached the confines of the Danube.
Once more he makes his appearance in the precincts of Ingolstadt; now travelling up the Danube
in the direction of his native Swabian country; he visits Neuburg and Ulm; he shows up at Stuttgart and
at Rottweil on the Neckar, wandering, as a travelling surgeon and physician, from one place to another.
A certain stability in the course of his erratic life is only reached in the second half of 1526 in the regions
of the upper Rhine. He also visits Baden and passes on to Strasburg, with which he is so familiar.
The fame of his marvelous cures spreads rapidly and quickly develops into eagerly-repeated
legends. A story of such an extraordinary cure, achieved by Paracelsus at Ingolstadt, has been preserved
and thus rendered by Sudhoff:
“Hohenheim stayed at an inn, belonging to an alderman, who had a daughter paralysed since the
day of her birth. She was complaining bitterly of her fate. Hohenheim told her to take a spoonful of wine
after each meal, then just a pinch of his Azoth of the Red Lion, so as to perspire copiously. The result of
this treatment was that, on the very same evening, the said 23 year-old girl suddenly walked into her
parents’ chamber—though she could not previously take a single step unaided—and, with tears of
gratitude threw herself at Theophrastus’s feet.”
To this period, probably, belongs, a later version of his early medical work, the so-called
“Volumen Paramirum.”81 It is a remarkable treatise, and its object is, to analyse and describe the origin
and causes of all diseases; this to be followed by appropriate methods of practical treatment and
medicines. In this respect five great “entities” are to be foremost considered, according to the Volumen
Paramirum. One of Paracelsus’s students and biographers82 sums up the significance of those five
“enses” and outlines the main contents of the book in the following terms: “Therein Paracelsus considers
boldly the five origins of all illness, viz—as coming either from some discordances in man’s own body,
the “ens naturale;”83 or through his environment, the “ens veneni;“ or from the corrupted influences of
the world-soul, i. e. from the “ens astrale;”84 or from man’s mental discrepancies, dangerous biases and
suggestions—” ens spirituale;”85 and, finally, as caused by Divine wrath and judgment.” —
There were at that time, apparently, good opportunities at Strasburg for the printing of such and
similar works, and also for practising medicine without undue hindrance. Moreover, Paracelsus seemed
to have, since his early travelling days, good friends in that lively city.86 Be this as it may, it was at
Strasburg that he decided—once more—to settle down. On December 5th 1526 “Theophrastus von
Hohenheim, doctor of medicine, who had purchased the burghership of Strasbourg,” was entered on the
citizen-roll of that city; he joined the Guild of the Lucerns, to which belonged corn-merchants, millers,
starch-makers, and—also !—practising surgeons and physicians.
During the same winter Paracelsus was called to the sick-bed of a well-known Basle personage:
into the house of the celebrated humanist and publisher, Johannes Froben or Frobenius. The learned man
was suffering from the consequences of an apoplectic stroke, could hardly move and had excruciating
pains in one leg. The doctors, having tried all their usual remedies in vain, suggested as a last resort the
amputation of the stricken leg, in those days a most dreadful perspective to be envisaged by a patient,
even if in desperate pain. Paracelsus came and within a short time cured the sufferer.
The éclat of this cure was still more enhanced by the circumstance that the great Desiderius
Erasmus of Rotterdam happened to be staying with Frobenius at that time, and witnessed the extra-
ordinary success of the treatment. Erasmus also availed himself of this opportunity of consulting
Theophrastus. And then, as Will-Erich-Peuckert puts it:
“In an unexampled ascent, Fortuna led him to the highest rank. Never again did she offer him her
hand as generously as in the years of 1526/27. . . “87
The town-council of Basle decided to invite the marvelous physician to settle down in their town
precincts. Paracelsus was appointed town-physician and professor at the Basle University. Dated at the
beginning of June 1527, Hohenheim’s Latin “Intimation” of his programme for the coming summer-
term was posted on the announcement board of Basle University.88
It is a remarkable and characteristic document promising a bold attempt “at the renewal of
Medicine,” challenging in drastic expressions the authority of the scholastic followers of Galenos and
Avicenna, and rejecting the humanists, “submissive merely to the rules of antiquity.” He, Theophrastus
von Hohenheim, would be guided, in his instructions, exclusively by those principles, which “he had
acquired through the nature of things aided by careful reflection, and had proved too by the long years of
his practice and experience.” Thus, practical knowledge and considered judgment were to be “the pillars
of his statements.”
The results were quick to follow: there had been 15 officially entered students at the Basle
University in 1525, five in I526;89 in 1527 the entry of the students rose to 31, and, still more striking
dropped in 1528 “after Hohenheim’s departure from Basle,” to one solitary undergraduate …
In the meantime jealousy, distrust and even hatred arose to an unprecedented pitch among
Paracelsus’s medical colleagues; it was not only a keen and fearless medical reformer and innovator,
that was being hunted down mercilessly, but the man himself—”to them so new, so strange, and lonely.”
On the other hand the fiery town-physician, bent only on one aim—efficient help to the sick and, for that
purpose, suitable instruction to the students, did not handle the medical “periwigs” too kindly, either by
word or by deed.
His provocative “Intimation” and lectures, held in the same tone, were followed by an even more
aggressive and spectacular act. On the June 24th 1527, he cast—presumably in a fit of temper—into
the brightly flaming St.John’s fire, on the Basle market-place, the “Summa of the Writings” (probably
the weighty Canons of Avicenna),90 much to the astonishment of the gathered crowds and the anger of
the learned doctors and their sycophants.
As if all this were not enough, Hohenheim—being the first to do so—delivered most of his
lectures in the “vulgar” German idiom, comprehensible to every barber-surgeon, instead of using the
medieval Latin, the language of the learned and cultured circles of those days. Moreover, he discarded
the sumptuous robes, worn by his doctor-colleagues, in fact he openly laughed at their solemnity, and
was himself running about mostly in some plain attire, often with visible marks of chemical experiments
and medical concoctions. Was he really in possession of a doctor’s degree, this curious stranger? Doubts
arose, and although nothing justified them, calumny transformed them into facts and followed
Theophrastus relentlessly to his very death and even after his departure from a troubled earthly life.
Other enemies appeared, in addition, among the Basle apothecaries, for Theophrastus had the
boldness to propose that all apothecaries should pass a proper examination, before entering their
profession, and vehemently denounced the profit-sharing arrangements between the Basle apothecaries
and physicians. Other drastic proposals were made by the energetic town-physician in order to regularise
the medical and hygienic conditions of the city. There seems to be no doubt that the town-council did
support him in a certain measure, but ... what a troublesome and inconvenient man he must have
appeared to these authorities.
A slanderous lampoon on Theophrastus (therein named “Cacophrastus”) appeared one Sunday
morning on the very doors of the Dome and seemed to have upset the irritable doctor very much. And
then a graver incident occurred which put dramatic end to his career at Basle.
Theophrastus had succeeded in curing a very important Basic personage, the rich and influential
Canon Cornelius von Liechtenfels. The canon already declared to be dying, sent for the famous stranger
and promised him, in his despair, a hundred guilders, should he, Theophrastus, succeed, if only in
alleviating the canon’s unbearable pains. Paracelsus prescribed three pills to be taken at certain intervals,
purgation, and diet; he considered the case, that was misunderstood by the Basle physicians and
professors, to be so simple that he even deemed it unnecessary to visit the patient again. The canon was
duly cured, but—forgetful of his sufferings and promises alike—refused to pay the agreed fee. Why !—
opined he—, who could be such a fool as to pay a hundred gold pieces for three pills and one
consultation; not he, the great and clever Canon von Liechtenfels; an ordinary fee of some six guilders
was ample! Paracelsus, always ready to treat the poor patients gratis, became furious in this particular
case and brought the matter before the court; in spite of the evidence in Hohenheim’s favour, the judges
found his claim unreasonable and decided in favour of the canon. Paracelsus, nevertheless, would not
give in; he appealed to the public opinion, denounced the judges and the city-magistrates as corrupt and
unworthy persons, and this not only “by word of mouth” but also by means of several pamphlets,
distributed among the town-people.
Now this was more than enough for the Basle dignitaries: this impertinent and restless man had
to be bent or broken once for ever!
In the depth of one stormy February-night in the year of grace 1528, the doctor is mysteriously
wakened up by a friend; he must fly at once, for to-morrow the gates of the city-dungeon will be opened
for him—to close on the inconvenient foreigner for, who knows, how long ?—He is alone; he is
defenceless.. . The horse is promptly saddled; one or two quick farewells, and he is outside the city
precincts riding towards Alsatia, rejected, penniless, with a beggar’s luggage.
And behind him rides another figure, of a vile and fantastic shape, to pursue him into many
lands, even into far distant climes and peoples: the Basle calumny. . .91
On the 4th of March he is already at Colmar.92 He was well received in this town, where he
practised with success as a physician, and began his treatises on syphilis. The Basle calumnies, however,
soon followed Paracelsus into the appreciating circle of his Colmar friends and drove him away from
this hospitable place. And now . . . it was “Misery” indeed!
In the summer of 1529 Hohenheim is at Esslingen. About this period of his life he will write
later: “My calamities, which began at Esslingen, were but confirmed and added to at Nuremberg.”
Passing via the old imperial city of Nordlingen, he arrived late in the same dreary summer of
1529 at Nuremberg. In the Chronicle of Sebastian Franck,93 the first contemporary attempt of a general
world-description, we find the following important statement:
“Dr. Theophrastus von Hohenheim, a physician and astronomer. Anno 1529 came the said doctor
to Nuremberg. A peculiar and wondrous man, who laughs at the doctors and scribes of the medical
faculty. He is said to have burnt at the University of Basle the Avicenna writings and to stand alone
against nearly the whole of the Medical Corporation, to use his own judicial physics, and to have
contrarieties with many.” Paracelsus left Nuremberg already in the winter of 1530.
To the Nuremberg period belongs his “Hospital (Infirmary) Book” with its great maxim: “The
highest foundation of medicine is Love.” The book is also remarkable for its astoundingly modern
notions of hygiene and diet. Most of Hohenheim’s time was, however, occupied with his not less
astonishing studies of the terrible contemporary scourge, “the French disease” with all its horrifying
consequences. The “cure” inflicted on the unlucky syphilis-victims in those days consisted in most cases
of the following three principal methods: starvation-diet and sometimes confinement to isolation
barracks; the merciless internal and external application of quicksilver in “horse-doses;” and the guayac-
treatment, this West Indian wood being used for suffocating fumigations or swallowed in some
distasteful tonics. Paracelsus wrote against the poisonous quicksilver treatment, and, undaunted, raised
his voice against the torments of the useless “guayac-cures.”94 Two of his treatises were published, and
powerful new enemies arose at once; the guajac-treatment was especially advantageous not so much to
the sick, as to the powerful merchant-bankers, the Fuggers of Augsburg, who had the monopoly of the
guayac-import into the Continental countries. Through the pressure of the Leipsic faculty of medicine,
whose dean Heinrich Stromer, had a share in the Fugger-profits, the Nuremberg town-council was
induced to prohibit all further printing of Paracelsus’ works. 95
This heavy blow fell on him early in 1530 at the Castle of Beratzhausen (situated on the Black
Laber between Nuremberg and Regensburg), where he arrived on his journey from Nuremberg to the
south.
And now he had to continue his life work as free-lance, thus perhaps even less restrained in his
utterances than before. He could still teach those young students, who—of their own free will—
flocked to him; his studies and writings were zealously pursued, and his manuscripts, wherever possible,
deposited in safe places, as with his friends of Colmar and of Neuburg on the Danube. The sick waited
for him everywhere, among the rich and among the poorest. And so he went on still undaunted and still
unbroken. A stout heart amidst a troubled world!
Paracelsus visited Regensburg96 and had another unpleasant experience with a rich patient at
Amberg, who, instead of showing gratitude, not only thought of cheating him of his agreed fee but also
of discovering by stealth and treachery the doctor’s professional secrets.97
His movements afterwards are not quite clear; most probably, he returned once more to
Beratzhausen, visited—this is certain—Nordlingen (Zimmern), and then passed on again, in the late
summer of 1530, to Regensburg.
To the time of Paracelsus’s stay at Beratzhausen belongs his treatise, the “Paragranum.”98 This
book concerning the “four pillars” of medicine is unfortunately marred by a violent, though justified,
polemic against the scholastic physicians of his time, the “slavish” followers of Galenos and Avicenna,
commentators and theorists, his bitter enemies; and also by the occurrence of certain frequent
repetitions, as well as by the introduction of new and somewhat contradictory scientific definitions. The
polemical heat is nevertheless, considering the persecutions to which he was subject, easily forgivable.
And the strangeness of certain terms and expressions is still more so, since he was the first—a pioneer
before Luther—to form the literary German language, shaping the new idiom as he proceeded in jotting
down his ideas, and for these startling ideas—almost revolutionary for medieval science—he had to coin
new words and to invent a distinct terminology for the renascent art of medicine, just about to arise. But,
taking the essential “grain” of the Paragranum, concealed under its rather uncouth shell,—what richness
of new Germanic expressions, what vigour and freshness, and what remarkable contents!
Translated into modern language, the four pillars of medicine are: (1) natural sciences (he calls
them “philosophy”); (2) metaphysics (in Paracelsus’s definition, “astronomy”), linked up with the study
of man; (3) hiatro-chemistry and pharmacology (“ alchemy”;99) and (4) professional ethics (“virtue”).
Such is the fundamental programme of a physician’s curriculum, established by the rejected
genius in a vision of the times to come, in the year of grace 1530.
And this is not all. In unmistakable and bold terms Paracelsus, the actual originator of
experimental research, proclaims the two essentials of every scientific investigation: experience and
experiment. Already at the very beginning of the Paragranum-preface he states in forceful words
that into his writings “not a single letter had been put without previous long experience and appropriate
experiment;” and he continues throughout the whole treatise to reiterate and underline that Truth is “no
longer any kind of speculation or fantastic science, but is based on the solid foundation of well-
considered experience.” This was repeated by Sir Francis Bacon in his “Novum Organum” in 1620 who,
in the eyes of the world at large, thereon founded his claim for immortality.
In the meantime Paracelsus’s fame as a great healer and physician, was spreading far and wide.
As tradition has it, a deputation of cloth-merchants reached him at Regensburg’100 with an invitation
to St. Gall in Switzerland to the sick bed of a prominent citizen, its ex-mayor, the aged Christian Studer.
So, presumably, Theophrastus repaired with them, by way of Munich, to this lively town, lying in the
midst of green forests and picturesque mountains. He arrived in the Canton of St.Gall probably at the
beginning of 1531.
This is, what the contemporary local chronologist of St.Gall, Rütiner, wrote in regard to
Hohenheim in his Diary (leaf 84):
“He (Paracelsus) is very diligent, sleeps but little; with boots and spurs and fully dressed,
he throws himself into bed and rests merely for three hours or so, then writes on again.”
Apart from his medical practice and an “alchemical kitchen,” well arranged and largely
supplied,101 Paracelsus busied himself at St. Gall with his little-known theological writings and
religious meditations, which had occupied his mind for some time, most particularly since the spring of
1530—a period of inner enlightenment and transformation, that continued until 1533 and later.102
The most important work of that time, which reached us in some early editions of the 16th
century, is his “Opus Paramirum.” There are five books which this title somewhat loosely embraces,
but the books four and five were—although conceived and sketched in parts at St.Gall103—written
down at a later period; the fifth, “De morbid invisibiles,” is usually treated independently of the earlier
four books.
The first two books of the Paramirum deal with the three fundamental principles or essentials
which underlie all manifestations of the primal matter (materia prima) on its two opposite planes, the
material and the spiritual, which, being alike in the Great World, Universe or Macrocosmos and in the
latter’s finest extract or quintessence, the Little World, Man or Microcosmos, are subject to the same
forces and to the same laws. It is amazing, how near the grandiose vistas of Paracelsus’s world-
conception104 in these two books, which are still awaiting the physicist’s detailed investigation and
comprehension, approach to the present light-theory of a man of de Broglie’s outstanding knowledge.
His Salt, the solid or coagulated condition, corresponds well to the present-day notion of corpuscles or
mass-particles; his Quicksilver, the liquid or the fluid, to the conjoint wave-movement according to the
modern view; and the Sulphur, that which burns, flames, and shines, seems to represent the term of the
light-quanta. Another modern illustration of Paracelsus’s great idea is the perpetual inter-action and
transformation of the trio: Photon (neutral entity), Electron (negative), and Positron; the two opposites
thus forming one shape or one unity, not perceptible to the instruments of science, but to man’s inner
sight alone.
The third book, concerning the Tartar or stone-diseases, contains the earliest clear notions of
metabolism and its implications.
The fourth, “De matrice,” draws attention to woman’s significance in the universal system of
creation, her womb being a complete, although the smallest (third) world, and to the resulting
peculiarities of her constitution and her diseases. In fact, in 1531 Paracelsus already calls for women’s
specialists!
The volume on the “Invisible diseases,” remarkable for those days of cruel superstitions and
gross conjectures, speaks of mental ailments and advises the treatment of the mentally-deranged (the
“devil-possessed,” as they were then called) not with chains or tortures, but with medicine and charity.105
The influence and the effects of will-power, imagination, and suggestion, both individual and collective,
are put forward with force and clearness.106 “Through the strength of his faith Man
stands above the spirits and overcomes them.”107
Whereas Paracelsus was thus busy with his theological meditations and scientific experiments
—with the curing of the sick above all—, the division in men’s hearts and minds, the chasm opened up
by the first years of the Reformation, was ever widening and led in Switzerland to open strife among the
Confederates, which culminated in the lamentable civil war between Zurich and the Roman Catholic
Cantons. On October 11th, 1531, Ulrich Zwingli108 was killed in the battle of Kappel.
These events, foreshadowing worse divisions and greater wars among mankind, shocked
Paracelsus’s super-sensitive mind in an extraordinary manner. He disappeared from the eyes of the busy
world. He left St.Gall, travelled in solitude and poor hamlets, unknown, passing swiftly from one place
to another; he fasted, preached, meditated, helped bodies and souls; he contemplated the terrifying
astrological appearances of those days, trying to solve their message to harassed mankind. His
movements since the end of 1531 can only be conjectured; it is in those “days of the desert” that he
wrote so movingly: “I do not know where I shall have to wander now; I do not care either, so long as I
have helped my sick.”109
As we shall presently see, a key to the direction of his travels seems to be given by the
chronological and local succession of his writings about the said “heavenly” observations and
interpretations of celestial events, but even then—what a thin Ariadne’s thread it is in the sombre
labyrinth of his wanderings in search of apostolic enlightenment! The Canton of Appenzell (its name
coming from Latin abbatis cella—abbot’s cell) appears to have been visited by Paracelsus during these
travels, but as to when and for how long—nothing is known with certainty.
On October 28th 1531 he is near the banks of the Lake of Constance,110 and—possibly—passes
through Aargau thereafter.
Whither then, in the troublesome year of 1532?
At Wurttemberg he meets, during the summer of that year, Sebastian Franck;111 he crosses the
Black forest, “the whole country of Swabia,112 and passes through “the upper German lands” on his way
towards the North.113 He enters Prussia,114 where he observes certain heavenly signs, and from where—a
poor wanderer, a proselytizing stranger-vagabond in the public’s eye—he is “driven out” this time.
In the first half of 1533 he—probably—traverses Silesia115 and in the middle of the same year
appears to return to the Cantons of St. Gall and Appenzell.116
Apart from the circumstance, that under Prussia or “Borussia” must be understood most probably
a much nearer lying “wooded region” on the borders of Silesia, the extension of that journey need not
altogether surprise us. Travelling in those day was not such a lengthy affair as one might think,
especially when done partly by means of the usual waterways. So, taking one instance, we read in a
dissertation consecrated to the Pilgrim-roads of those remote days the following passage: “Travelling on
the waterways went on sometimes much quicker: thus a Constance chronicle relates that in the year 1466
twenty-four pilgrims, coming from Einsiedeln, travelled in one day from Zurich to Strasburg, and,
although they did not start from Zurich very early, they arrived at Strasburg still by day-light, and this in
spite of the advanced season.”117
Paracelsus’s further movements continue to be uncertain, but there is little doubt, that he actually
spent some time in the second half of 1533 in the valley of the Inn, visiting probably Hall and
Schwaz, observing the miners’ conditions of life and health, and administering such help as was in
his power. For now, an inwardly transfigured man, he is eager to relieve the sufferings of sick humanity
with all his deepened knowledge and clarified insight.118
We are on surer ground early in the summer of 1534, when Paracelsus presents himself, as doctor
and healer, at Innsbruck. Because of his poverty, “his strange manners,” and tattered garments, he is very
ungraciously received by the town-authorities: “more like a charlatan or vagabond than a truly studied
doctor” . . . He leaves the inhospitable town and, in a miserable condition passes once more the Brenner,
turning his step southwards.
In the height of summer, 1534, Paracelsus stands before the gates of the old Germanic city,
Sterzing. Since the month of June the “black death” is ravaging the unfortunate town. God’s visitation is
mighty this time and whoever can escape the pestilential air of the afflicted town flies far away. Not so
Hohenheim: he boldly demands admission and steps fearlessly into the infected streets among their
doomed houses and the chariots carrying out the dead. He must help; he knows secret and efficient
remedies; he cures, he nurses, and, in effect, helps to stop the terrorizing epidemic. Yet, he is looked
upon askance, with suspicion,—just as at Innsbruck: can this beggar in torn overalls be in fact one of the
learned doctors! ?—The epidemic passing, the suspicious man’s services being no more urgently
needed, he is asked to leave the ungrateful city’s confines, and he departs—once again a beggar,
without luggage and without any fixed abode.
Fortunately, he has met two friends at Sterzing: Kerner and Max Poschinger, who could stretch
him a helping hand in the hours of direst misery. Together with Poschinger he proceeded to Meran
and found there “new happiness and honour;” from Meran to his beloved “healthy” Veitlin …
In the same year 1534 he writes at Meran a treatise on the Pest and dedicates the booklet to the
city of Sterzing. In this treatise he expresses himself with clarity and in an unambiguous language; his
only desire is to help the sick and to relieve their sufferings; and he throws aside all the customary
veiled expressions of the alchemists and their conventions, thereby, of course, adding still more to the
formidable array of his foes. For the first time he styles himself not simply as “a doctor of two
medicines” (physician and surgeon), but also as “Professor of the Holy Scriptures.”
To the same period belongs Paracelsus’s work on miners’ ailments119 _the first medical book
dealing with professional diseases and Hygiene.
Via the Bernina pass, in the Canton of Grisons (Graubunden), Paracelsus now reaches the village
and watering place of St.Moritz, in the upper Engadine, whose springs were highly praised by him.
Wandering further through Grisons, comprising most of ancient Rhaetia with its many other mineral
springs, passing through the upper valley of the Rhine, of which he left us a picturesque description,
Paracelsus is in the summer 1535 at Ragaz in the canton of St.Gall, about 1 1/2 miles from “Bad
Pfafers,” the old bathing establishment in the wild gorge of the Tamina. He is most graciously received
in the ancient Benedictine abbey of Pfafers founded about 724, by its abbot Johann Jacob Russinger, and
compiles for him a Note on the Virtues, Efficacy and Effects of the Pfaferswaters and baths,120 a
pamphlet which has not lost it value up to the present day.
His further wandering led him presumably via Allgäu (with a visit to Kempten), speeding
constantly from one patient to another, busy with manuscripts and notes; in the spring of 1536 we find
him at Isny and at Memmingen (Ungershausen), where he had some altercations with the landlord of the
inn he was staying at; he rides on, visiting Ulm,121 Monchs-Rot, Nordlingen, Mindeiheim, and
Augsburg, and resting as usual but little.
In October 1536 Paracelsus is at Augsburg.
The year 1536 is for him a significant date: it is the year of his outstanding literary success—the
only one during all his life, the printing of his voluminous work, “The Great Surgery book.”
The end of 1536 sees him at Munich, and at the beginning of 1537 he is again on the shores of
the Danube, visiting a friend of his younger days at Eferding, Dr.Johann von Brant, “one of the much-
experienced knowers of the Philosophia Adepta, and a votary of the arts of Vulcan and Apollo.” He
pushes on towards the Moravian Kromau, southwest from Brunn, where he is called to the sick bed of a
highly-important patient, the Hereditary Marshal of the Bohemian Kingdom, Johann von der Leipnik.122
The grey Marshal had long been suffering from acute dropsy and partial paralysis; Paracelsus’s advice
came too late; the best he could do was to calm the hopeless patient’s ills and pains, and so, having
prescribed the proper medical treatment and regime, the doctor left for Vienna. He reached the capital of
the Habsburgs in the same year 1537. On the way a detour was made to
Pressburg,123 where the now celebrated man was welcomed with pomp and a festive meal, “spread
over two full tables.”
Before we turn to the occurrences at Vienna, we must pause to consider—for the length of a few
brief paragraphs, since space forbids more—Paracelsus’s greatest work, the synthesis of his grandiose
world-conception, the “Astronomia Magna” or “the whole Sagacious Philosophy of the great and of the
small world.”124
Here are Professor Sudhoff’s remarks prefacing his edition of this monumental creation of
Paracelsus’s genius:
“This is, undoubtedly, the authentic undisputable kernel of the mature work of the ripened man—
Paracelsus at his height.”125
“A volume, which allows us to gain an insight into the singular circle of Hohenheim’s manner of
reasoning: of his thought bent upon the comprehension of the World’s cohesion, such as he appeared to
understand in its cosmic and anthropological significance in the Old Testament and in the Christian
Doctrines, interpreted in the light of the later Platonists.”126
“Already in 1535 or 1536, Hohenheim was busy with the disentangling of many and various
ideas connected with magic, divination, and—in the widest sense—cosmological notions generally …”
“The first book of the Astronomia Magna was finished on June 22nd 1537, at the Moravian
Kromau. The preface to the fourth book is dated at St.Veit in Carinthia, where he is certain to have been
dwelling in the second half of August 1538 and, may be, passed some time in September on his return
from Klagenfurt; perhaps even part of the winter of 1539, working further on his manuscripts… The
substantial elaboration of the contents of the volume falls accordingly into this period 1537-1539.”127
 The great design, the proposed immense pattern of the Astronomia Magna is best expressed by
Paracelsus himself, when he writes therein boldly and with assurance:
“It is indeed possible for a man to get hold of and to enclose the whole of the world in his grasp
and this with all its foundations and in clear perception of its perfect entirety.”128
The whole of his transcendental viewpoint on Man and Universe is embraced and put vividly
forth, mostly with incomparable and penetrating clarity, with the convincing knowledge of an
experienced scientist; of a great thinker and explorer of life’s highest and deepest mysteries. He was a
seer too, his pen stopping only at the ultimate expression in words of the final mystical experience
of the super-natural gifts (the second part), and casting a veil over the development and “olympic”
powers of the immeasurable faith, to be attained by the apostle-like believers (the third part, “yet
unrevealed”).
The end of the fourth book, on the Infernal Astronomy, and therewith the end of the whole
Sagax, comes abruptly. A paragraph on the Infernal Magic is about to begin, but “here”—in the words of
Joh. Huser129 - ”Theophrastus, in the midst of a page, suddenly stops writing; that which was to follow,
lies perhaps concealed—if not already perished—in a place unknown.”
The first part of the great work—the Natural Astronomy—contains under the medieval terms
such as Magic, Necromancy, Nectromancy, Astrology, and others, astonishingly modern notions of the
advanced science of our days and, may be indications of still higher knowledge yet to come both on the
mental and physical planes. So, for instance, the processes of hypnotism, suggestion and psycho-analysis
are stated with great force and clarity.
In the same part are included also some remarkable statements on Magic and “magical sciences;’
here are a few of them:
Leaf 26 b: “(In ancient days) the sapients were called Magi . . . guarding the highest wisdom in oriental
countries.
Leaf 41b: “That science is truly Magic which is able to bring the forces of heaven into a medium and to
set them into operation through the same.”
Leaf 45b: “Like a physician putting his medicine into a small box, an extract weighing little yet
containing great virtues, so can also a Magus put into a small stone much of the heavenly science—and
such (the said small stones) are the Magus’s boxes in which he preserves the sidereal power and
virtues.”
Leaf 26b: “Such is Magic’s art and operation that one may hear a voice from over the seas; and also that
a man may speak in the Occident with another who dwells in the Orient. Just as Nature enables a voice
to be heard at a distance of a hundred steps, these magical species do so for a distance of a hundred
German miles.—And further: just as Nature by means of its forces enables us to move a boat or a horse
and to reach the object in one month, so can magical arts do the same in one day.”
Leaf 43b: “And now mark ye further, that the art of Cabalistica or Cabalia also makes use of such magic
powers, and this in the following manner. There is a pipe and when one speaks through this same pipe, a
listener standing at the other end of the trunk can hear and understand the spoken sentence.”130
Leaf 44a: “The science of Magic can turn a man into a gem (a precious instrument with wondrous
powers), into a steed . . ., into a bird, in all of which the astral movers fulfill their action; also write down
on a piece of paper the man’s thoughts and transmit them to another at a great distance.”
The question arises: were these clear notions our modern “discoveries” but visions of an
enlightened seer, or (and much in Paracelsus’s writing points to this latter conclusion) did some of the
medieval “alchemists”—their secrets locked safe under the sombre vaults of dark laboratories, the
dangerous “knowledge” inherited from the ancient “magicians,” wisely guarded in occult circles, far
aloof from the profane world, —did they in fact know infinitely more than we, in our pride, deem it
possib1e?131
At the time of writing his Philosophia Sagax, Paracelsus was already considered by the world at
large as a great magician and soothsayer. To foes he appeared to be a malignant sorcerer who had
contracted a pact with the devil; how explain otherwise his marvelous cures and his extraordinary
predictions!
All sorts of tales and legends are, accordingly attached to Paracelsus’s stay at Vienna in 1537.
We know, however, for certain that he was graciously received in audience by Ferdinand I,132 the King
of Bohemia and Hungary, the future Emperor and successor of Charles V, that 100 golden guilders were
promised to him on that occasion and never paid; that his hopes of seeing the final version of his treatise
on “Tartar Diseases” into print were bitterly frustrated, his old medical antagonists being hard at work
again, even at the Royal court itself; that he visited the mineral springs of Baden, near the metropolis,
and investigated the supposed gold-veins at Kahlenberg; and that in spring 1538 he left Vienna, a
disappointed man once again.
He rode on via Semmering, Murtal, Judenburg, Friesach, Bath Einöd, and arrived at Villach in
May 1538.
On the 12th May 1538, Hohenheim obtained from the Magistrates and Council of the city of
Villach a deed to the effect that he, the highly-learned Doctor of both Medicines, was his father’s
legitimate son and heir, and that the lamented Bombast von Hohenheim, a Licentiate of Medicine,
had departed from this life after thirty-two years spent at Villach “honestly and honourably.” Very
probably, Paracelsus hoped by bringing the unimpeachable character and faithful services of his
father back to the memory of the Carinthian authorities to incline these worthies towards the printing of
the meretorious Villach-physician’s filial pen-productions.
On August 24th of the same year he writes at St.Veit, in Carinthia, a “Dedication” to the
Carinthian States,133 meant as a preface to a Carinthian Chronicle, which was to be accom-
panied by his “Seven Apologies,” the Labyrinth of Erring Physicians, and by the latest version of the
Book on Tartaric Diseases. He evidently cherished great hopes of having these works printed with the
help and approval of the Carinthian authorities; and in fact, on September 2nd 1538, they sent him
to Klagenfurt134 a most encouraging answer. Alas! the matter remained at that, Paracelsus’s manuscripts
were put negligently aside, and bound together with some other obsolete documents.
At the end of 1538 Paracelsus was at Wolfsberg (the northern part of Lavanttal) and had given up
all hope.
His trace is then lost again.135 Nothing certain is known of him till the early spring of 1540, when
on March 2nd he writes, once again at Klagenfurt, to a distinguished patient that he cannot possibly
come to his sick-bed, as desired, “because of his own bodily debility,” and besides, Paracelsus adds
significantly, “he is just waiting for a certain written message of importance.” That message
came at last and brought him to his final resting-place at Salzburg: the welcome call from the
Administrator of the Salzburg Bishopric.
By August 1540 Paracelsus is back at the same town of Salzburg, where—so many years
before—the young and impetuous scholar Hohenheim had once thought of settling down to the life of a
quiet, medical practitioner, like his venerable father.
About the last year of his life we also know little. He still undertook small journeys (so in April
1541 to the Strobl-estate at the Wolfgangsee), in spite of his growing illness—the result of daring
laboratory experiments, especially with quicksilver and arsenic preparations.
On September 24th 1541 this martyr of science died136—the exact place of his death not being
quite certain—in the city of Salzburg, and, according to his wish, was buried among the poor
parishioners in St.Sebastian’s Cemetery.
To conclude, instead of many grandiloquent phrases, here are three very soberly and short-
worded appreciations of Paracelsus’s achievements and significance.
Dr. J. Strebel:
“Paracelsus belongs to those great masters of methodic knowledge and experimental
investigation, who have laid the foundations of our modern natural sciences.”
Carl Gustav Jung:
“We see in Paracelsus not only a pioneer in the domains of chemical medicine, but also in those
of an empirical psychological healing science.”
And Knaur’s lexicon, Berlin, 1939:
“Paracelsus: An outstanding physician, many-sided enquirer into natural sciences, and mystical
philosopher; founder of the modern art of pharmacology and therapeutics . . . His ideas have recently
acquired great influence in medical Science once more.”
ANNOTATIONS

1 This is the most probable date: comp. Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 37; also Sudhoff’s”Paracelsus”, p.
11.
2 Compare, however, with Nova Acta Paracelsica (Basle 1944) ; “Die Kindheit Theophrasts in
Einsiedeln,” Karl Bittel.
3 Paracelsus called them later “God’s own dispensaries.”
4 Theophrastus of Eresos; studied at Athens under Plato and Aristotle circa 372 —288 B.C.
5 Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 36.
6 Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 127 (“ Die sieben Schutz-, Schirm- und Trutzreden, oder Defensionen; die
sechste Defension, zu entschuldigen seine wunderliche Weise und zornige Art”).
7 There might have been, of course, other additional reasons for this radical change of home and
practice. Vide Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 38—39.
8 By the known St. Gallen writer, Josef Denkinger; also Sticker, another biographer, draws attention to
the fact, that in his later “Schrift Pfeffers” Paracelsus refers particularly to his father (“Born into his
father’s art,” etc.) ; N.A.L. X94.
9 A descendant of the Austrian Counts Fuger (or Fugen); not to be mistaken for the Augsburg merchant
Fugger.
10 The Baccalaureate.
11 Joachim von Watt; 1484—1551.
12 Not to be mistaken for Trithemius, the magician-Abbot of Sponheim at Nahegau. The error has been
shown by Prof. Karl Sudhoff (“ Paracelsus,” p. 14). For Theophrast’s own testimony to the same effect,
v. Sudhoff’s edition, vol. VIII, p. 72.
13 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. X, p. 354.
14 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. X, p. 20.
15 The following (of necessity only approximative) list of the university-towns visited at that time by
Theophrastus is based in the main on Sudhoff’s 14 volume-edition. The referred visit to Cologne may
however have taken place at a later date.
16 Strebel-Zollikofer vol. I, p. 42. Comp. also: Sudhoff’s “Paracelsus,” p. 14; and Strunz’s “Paracelsus,”
p. 18.
17 Called “Coelius Aurelianus,” the former word spelt sometimes as Caelius, and the latter “corrected”
here and there by diligent copyists to “Aureolus.”
18 This theory finds its confirmation in the fact, that Hohenheim, when making an application in 1538 to
the Carinthian authorities and referring to his father’s services at Villach, has signed himself expressly,
at the head of all his other titles, as Aureolus and subsequently received an official reply addressed to
him in the same manner. Hardly consistent with Sudhoff’s view, Theophrastus might have been
surnamed as Aureolus by his father because of his “golden hair.’ It is well nigh unbelievable that
Paracelsus would have been signing important documents with a child’s nickname; besides, we even do
not know with any degree of certainty, if he had ever been in possession of that splendid crown of
golden hair. Of course the name “Aureolus” might have been derived from some other book of similar
nature (as has been suggested by Paracelsus’s early biographer, Dr. Loches p. 19).
19 There was nothing unusual in such a decision, for it was a general fashion in Germany of those days
to complete young students’ education abroad, particularly in the Italian universities. Neither is the
extension of the voyage surprising; there are other and many examples of similar keen spirits and their
voyages, as for instance the great anatomist Vesalius (Andreas Vesalius, 1514 - 1564); the latter, born at
Brussels, went from the Netherlands to Montpellier, thence to Paris; lectures at Basle, at Padua and
Bologna, had some bitter experiences in Spain, accomplished a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and, after a
shipwreck in the Ionian Sea, died in great distress on the island of Zante.
20 Vide for detailed references: Strebel-Zollikofer Edition; vol. I, p. 46; further in the same vol. pp.
287—302 (with the map facing p.289).
21 Vide “Geschichte der Medizin,” Th. Meyer-Steineg and Karl Sudhoff (Jena 1928); p. 273. Also
Sudhoff’s edition of Paracelsus’s writings; vol. X, p. 12—14. Comp. Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 43 and
147; also “Nochmals der Doktortitel von Paracelsus” by Prof. Albrecht Burckhardt, Basle,—im
Korrespondenzblatt für Schweizer Arzte (1914, p. 884—887).
22 Vide Strunz (“ Paracelsus,” p. 18), and others.
23 “Para,” derived from the Greek, means here: over and beyond.
24 The usual medieval designation for Syphilis.
25 There, according to some, “he became acquainted with cabalistic and magical arts.” Comp. Sudhoff’s
edition XIV, p. 488.
26 The pilgrim-routes of those days included, curiously enough, as one journey for pious travellers the
tomb of Apostle Jacob at Santiago and Our Lady of Einsiedeln!
27 Astronomica et Astrologica. Cologne, 1567; by Arnoldi Byrckmans Erben (vide pp.99, 118, etc.).
28 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. VIII, p. 359.
29 Aschner’s edition; vol. III, p. 237.
30 Comp. Sudhoff’s edition; vol. VI, p. 351.
31 Roman emperor and king of Germany and Spain; 1500—1558. Emperor from 1519 to 1556.
32 Chief town, Arnhem.
33 Dutch Vriesland; chief town, Leeuwarden.
34 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. VI, p. 55.
35 The seat of the oldest university of Northern Germany (since 1419).
36 Christian II, 1481—1559, king of Denmark and Norway; son of King John (of Denmark, Norway and
Sweden).
37 Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 46—47.
38 The so-called “Stockholm blood-bath” of November 8th, 1520.
39 This Courlad harbour is free from ice nearly all the year round.
40 Since the treaty of 1466 the Order held East Prussia as vassal of Poland, although frequently
challenging this Polish suzerainty.
41 Iwan the Third (1462—1505), made Moscow the central seat of government for “all Russia.”
42 Ruled from 1505 until his death in 1530. Known also as Vassily IV.
43 Aschner’s edition; vol. I, p. 739.
44 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. VI, p. 430.
45 Santiago de Compostela.
46 So was then called Moscow by the travellers from Western Europe.
47 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. VI, p. 350.
48 Of his having been “made a prisoner” Paracelsus speaks himself (vide Aschner’s edition; vol. II, p.
256) further particulars are given by von Helmont in the Tartan Historia, par. 3 (Jean Baptiste von
Helmont Belgian alchemist and discoverer of carbonic acid gas 1577—1644; had access to several
Paracelsian papers) also by Aschner in the introduction to vol. I (p. XXI). There is no foundation for
assigning to this imprisonment a long term of years as done by some older biographers.
The first “discoverer” of the modern term “gas” was actually not van Helmont, but his “spiritual master.
Paracelsus, who long before had spoken of” Chaos” in the sense of our “Gas” (see for example Dr. W.
Brunn’s: “Zur Elementenlehre des Paracelsus,” p. 41. Sudhoff’s “Achiv fur Geschichte der Medizin und
der Naturwissenschaften,” Leipzig, 1941. Also Streb~Zollikofer, vol. I, p. 40).
49 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. VIII, p.42.
50 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. VI, p. 175.
51 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. XI. Confirmed by van Helmont.
52 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. VII, p. 332.
53 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. XI, p. 377.
54 The ancient idea of curing “like with like” was restated and developed; this, however, did not become
a universal medical principle with Paracelsus, but to be applied only in certain appropriate cases.
55 Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 48.
56 Vide “Die grofle Wundartzney. Der dritte Theil. Das Funfftzehendt Capitel (von der Corrigierung der
Juden). Das Sechzehendt Capitel (von der Impostur der Griechischen Artzten).”
57 The district lying between the rivers Drave, Danube, and Save.
58 Sudhoff’s “Paracelsus,” p. 16.
59 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. II, p. 279.
60 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. IX, p. 347.
61 The Mameluke sultans ruled over Egypt until the conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1517. Egypt was
then officially placed under a Turkish pasha, but practically remained under the Mameluke beys.
Paracelsus speaks of the Mamelukes in his treatise on Epilepsy (Sudhoff, vol.VIII, p. 298) and in other
places (vide, for instance, vol. IX, p. 401). The Turkish conquest, having united under one supreme
ruler Egypt, Syria and other Turkish dominions, no doubt, much facilitated the next stages of the
doctor’s journey.
62 Sycne presented then a place well known, if sometimes only by name, to the learned world of
Paracelsus’s days. The first—and astonishingly accurate—measuring of the earth, handed down to us, is
that of the Greek geographer, Eratosthenes (Circa 284—204 B. C.), and is based on two points of
fixation, the towns of Alexandria and of Syene. His chief work, Geographica, was widely circulated
among certain groups of the humanists and, naturally, attracted their curiosity to that geographies Mecca.
63 Sudhoff’s edition; voi. VIII, p. 298. Concerning the Nile-physicians vide vol. VII, p. 129.
64 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. I, p. 140.
65 Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 49.
66 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. XII, p. 242.
67 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. VIII, p. 99.
68 Sinai is mentioned too in Paracelsus’s writings. Mt Sinai was often visited by the pilgrims of the
Middle Ages.
69 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. IX, p. 418. The description well fitting for that time: the rebuilding of
Jerusalum and its walls began in 1537 under Suleiman II, the Magnificent.
70 Philosophia Magna. Cologne, 1567, p. 215.
71 The town of Paphos, celebrated for its Venus temple.
72 Astronomica et Astrologica, Cöln, 1567, p. 137.
73 Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 304. The island of Delos (item, p. 299).
74 Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 312.
75 Who once had also made the same journey to Athens.
76 Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 49.
77 Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 50.
78 Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 300.
79 Archidoxorum Theophrasti. Pars prima. Coln, 157 p.l.
80 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. X, p. 31.
81 Edited and commented by Sudhoff’s pupil, Daniel Achelis (“ Buch von Krankheit und gesundem
Leben;” Jena, 1928).
82 Vide Peuckert’s “Paracelsus,” p. 48.
83 Heredity is pointed out as one of the disease-causes.
84 In other words, “the constellation” of any given time is its historical significance and propensities.
Think of the afflictions caused by great wars!
85 Provoking grave mental disorders.
86 Widely reputed too for its budding school of surgeons (Sticker, “Paracelsus,” N.A.L., vol. X, p.6l).
87 “Geheimnisse,” p. XXIII.
88 Strebel-Zollikofer vol. I, p. 255.
89 Only partly explained by an outbreak of the pest in that city.
90 Ibn Sina (980—1037); called “the brightest star of the Islamic firmament of medicine;” of noble
Persian origin; physician, philosopher, and statesman; compiler of the said famous “Canons of
Medicine,” greatly respected during the Middle Ages, but of purely theoretical value, based on Aristotle
and Galenos (physician in Rome in the 2nd century A. D.; of the greatest influence on the faculty of
medicine during the Middle Ages).
91 The crassest instance of defamation by an ungrateful disciple is presented by his Basle laboratory-
assistant and pupil, Oporinus, who even accused Paracelsus of being perpetually drunk.
92 On the way to Colmar he stopped at Ensisheim and—despite his well nigh desperate position at that
moment—observed carefully the meteorite which fell there on the 7th November 1492, just about a year
before his birth.
93 Sebastian Franck von Word, 1499—1543; “Chronicle, Chronology and Historical Bible,” leaf 253.
94 Ulrich von Hutten, born 1488, praised this “cure,” but died after the guajac treatment, in dreadful
sufferings, in September 1523 (Strebel_Zollikofer, vol.1, p.57).
95 Paracelsus had further treatises on the French disease lying ready for publication.—Since then only
his “Yearly practices” or “Prognostications” continued to appear from time to time; some of the striking
predictions therein contained—long before Nostradumus’s utterances—deserve a far more careful study
and analysis than heretofore. His astrological views show in certain aspects a remarkable analogy to
those of modern astrologers (comp. esp. “The Astrology of Personality” by Dane Rudhyar).
96 He was there on the 29th March 1530 during a solar eclipse.
97 The sad account of this unpleasant story is signed by Hohenheim in the following well nigh tragic
terms: “Given at Amberg, in this mine solitude, July 1530.”
98 For the following remarks the second Huser’s edition was mainly consulted (Zetzners Ausgabe;
Strafiburg 1616, “DasBuch Paragranum”).
99 The object of chemistry, says Paracelsus in the Paragranum, is not to make gold but to prepare
healing drugs, and concludes: “Alchemy signifies Modum Praeparandi Rerum Medicinalium.”
100 Vide Erwin Kolbenheyer’s Paracelsus-trilogy.
101 Paracelsus’s invitation to the town of St. Gall came about possibly thanks to the intervention of
Bartholomew Schobinger, Studer’s son-in-law, an enlightened rich merchant of St.Gall; his brother
Hieronymus later arranged “an alchemical kitchen” for Paracelsus in the vacant precincts of St. Gall’s
monastery. There was a certain amount of antagonism between the family Schobinger and the important
town-physician of those days, the aforesaid Vadianus (“Vadian und Paracelsus,” by Mathäus Gabathuler,
St.Gallen, Almanach auf das Jahr 1945, p. 15—19). —
Paracelsus dedicated nevertheless the first three books of the Opus Paramirum (1531) to Vadianus.
102 From Hohenheim’s numerous theological treatises few have been edited so far, and then only in a
very insufficient manner. According to his view and wish—thus strangely fulfilled—they were fit but
for a limited circle of readers and not intended either for printing or wide circulation. The short
monographs of Paracelsus’s more curious “Philosophia magna”—a treasure store for the study of the
folklore and popular beliefs of his time (Homunculus, elemental spirits, monsters, witches etc.)—were
also written between 1529—1532; (vide Peuckert’s “Paracelsus”, pp. 273, 278, 279, etc., containing a
brief and useful analysis of the Philosophia Magna).
103 Sudhoff’s “ Paracelsus,” p. 109.
104 Vide de Broglie’s articles on Light and Matter.
105 The beginnings of psychotherapy are here clearly indicated.
106 Schopenhauer was one of the admirers of this part of the Paramirum-philosophy.
107 Vide Strebcl-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 66.
108 1484—1531. Swiss religious reformer; Vadian’s friend.—In August 1531, two months before the
Kappel-battle, a comet made its appearance, was observed and “explained” by Paracelsus. On this
occasion Vadian’s coolness towards Paracelsus was made manifest in a letter directed by him to a “star-
knowing” colleague, Dr. Christopher Clauser (St. Gallen: Jahrbuch auf 1945, p. 24).
109 Vide Pcuckert’s “Geheinmisse,” p. XXXIV.
110 Germ. Bodensee. Paracelsus was perhaps on a visit to Bartholomew Schobinger’s castle, mentioned
by Sticker.—” Uslegung des Fridbogens so erschinen ist imWinmon, gestanden uff den Bodenseeischen
Grenzen im Jahr 1531, den do abkundt den lJnfriden so der Comet, im Ougstmon erschinen, angezeigt
hat,” 28th October 1531 (Sudhoff’s edition; vol. IX, p.403).
111 Peuckert’s “Parace]sus,” p. 330.
112 Vide “Astronomia et Astrologica. Doctor Aureoli Theophrasti von Hohenheim, Paracelsi genannt.”
Getruckt zu Coln, bey Arnoldi Byrkmans Erben. Anno 1567 (p. 210).
113 “Uslegung des Cometen und Virgultae, in hohen Teutschen Landen erschinen, Anno 1532”
(Sudhoff’ edition; vol. IX, p. 411).
114 “In PreuBen sind mir anno 1532 vorkomen sterngeschoB mit gelben, schwarzen und braunen
flecken; ist em unerhörtes kinderbocken darauf gefolget, etc.” (De Pestilitate; Sudhoff’s edition, vol.
XIV, p. 616);—Huser used a copy of “de Pestilitate,” made by Paracelsus’s faithful follower, Dr.
Johannes Montanus (vide also Sudhoff’s edition; vol. XIV, p. XXXIII) .—Under Prussia Paracelsus
meant in fact “Borussia,” (as he calls both regions indifferently), probably the “forest-district” lying not
far from the Silesian border; he spoke precisely of “Silesia and Borussia,” (Sudhoff’s edition; vol. IV, p.
275).
115 Vide “von den wunderbarlichen, ubernaturlichen Zeichen, so in vier Jahren einander nach im
Himmell Gewolbe und Luft erschin. 1534” (Sudhoff’s edition; vol. IX, p. 438) .—Sticker dates this
Silesian journey—obviously by some error—in 1540, when Hohenheim, already very ill, could not
possibly undertake such long journeys.
116 Urnbsch, Gais, Roggenhalm, above Bllhler? Vide Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 66.
117 P. Odilo Ringholz O.S. B. Wallfahrtsgeschichte Unserer Lichen Frau von Einsiedeln. Freiburg im
Breisgau. Herdersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, p. 250.
118 On the 17th December 1533 the Abbot of St. Gall paid Dr. Theophrastus four and a half guilders for
the treatment of a certain Dr. Johanncs HeB, a cathedral-preacher (St.Galler Jahrbuch auf 1945, p. 26).
119 Von der Bergsucht und anderen Bergkrankheiten (1533/1534).
120 Von des Bades Pfãfers Tugenden, Kraften und Wirkung, Ursprung und Herkommen, Regiment und
Ordnung (Pfäfers, 31. August 1535).
121 Where he went in order to discuss with the Ulm publishing house of Hans Varnier the printing of his
“Great Surgery book.” Later he became dissatisfied with Varnier and applied himself to the printer
Hemrich Steiner at Augsburg: on July 28th 1536, Steiner finished the first part, and on August 22nd the
second volume of Paracelsus’s great work. Before the end of 1536 the whole edition was sold out, and a
new edition appeared at the beginning of 1537.
122 Up to the present war visitors to Leipnic’s castle were usually shown a vaulted apartment, the
alleged “Paracelsus’s chemical kitchen.”
123 Known also as Bratislava of Czecho-Slovakia; then belonging to the Kingdom of Hungary.
124 Astronomia Magna oder Die gantze Philosopbia sagax der groBen und kleinen Welt. Gedruckt zu
Frankfurt am Mayn / hey Martin Lechler / in verlegung Hieronyme Feyerabends. Anno MDLXXI.
125 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. XII, p. V.
126 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. XII, p. V.
127 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. XII (containing the Astronomia Magna) p. VI.
128 Sudhoff’s edition; vol. XII (Philosophia sagax), p. 401.
129 The first and exemplary editor of Paracelsus’s complete writings; the Basle edition, 1589—1591
(ten volumes).
130 Yet we read in the modern Harmsworth’s Universal Encyclopedia (Special Revised Edition; vol. II,
p. 821) “It was in the New Atlantis that telephonic communication was anticipated by Bacon—’ means
to convey sounds in trunks and pipes to great distance’.” Words used by Paracelsus nearly a hundred
years before! Francis Bacon, Lord of Verulam, lived from 1561 until 1626; his New Atlantis appeared
posthumously in 1627.
131 Paracelsus, for instance, seems to have been acquainted with some of the properties and effects of
electrical energy.—The Viennese editor of Paracelsus’s works, Dr. Bernhard Aschner (1926—1932;
four volumes), who had successfully tried out certain prescriptions left by the great physician, thinks that
Paracelsus had some notions of “radioactivity” and “radio-therapeutics,” with its accompanying dangers
and benefits. —In the words of Dr. P. Ildefons Betschart, Einsiedeln: “It is well to bear in mind that the
terms used by Paracelsus are not to be taken literally, but rather to be considered symbolic definitions of
the dynamic powers and effluvia which are permeating the universe . . . radiations of all kinds . . .“
(Prolegomena zur Philosophic Sagax) .—The modern theosophical thought is, in many of its aspects,
foreshadowed in Paracelsus’s teachings (comp. for inst. “A Treatise on White Magic” by Alice A.
Bailey).
132 1503—1564.
133 Strebel-Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 81, etc.
134 Before arriving at Klagenfurt, the chief Carinthian town, he passed by way of Lavanttal (Preblau)
and appears to have been visiting St. Veit time and again.
135 There are, however, indications that during the following obscure period he visited “Swabia,
Switzerland and Bavaria, where about 1538 a strange kind of pestilence had broken out” (De Pestilitate;
Sudhoff’s edition vol. XIV, p. 616).
136 Dr. J. Strebel’s carefully considered diagnosis says: toxic state of liver, combined with ascites, and
kidney shrinkage; Sudhoff’s view, liver-cancer. Vide Strebe] Zollikofer; vol. I, p. 73.
ADDENDUM

Faced with the latest scientific discoveries (including the so-called atomic bomb), it is perhaps
fitting to close this short essay with three striking statements by Paracelsus, taken from his treatise
entitled:
“Das Buch Meteororum, des Edlen und Hochgelehrten Herrn Aureoli Theophrasti von
Hohenheim, Paracelsi genannt, beider Artzney Doctoris. Gedruckt zu Cöln / bey Arnoldi Byrckmans
Erben. Anno 1566.”
(Kantonsbibliothek Luzern.)
Page 52 . . . So that when the process of perfection (purification or sublimation) properly begins,
the mass (or matter) transforms itself there and then into a ray.
Know therefore that the said mass is ultimately nothing else but a box full of great force and
power …
Page 53 . . . For what is so mighty, so violent and so wondrous too as a ray in its effect and
action.

Back fly leaf

FOR THE FIRST TIME, the true Paracelsus is being introduced to the English-reading public and it is
hoped that this little volume, which will be followed by English translations of the original complete and
unabridged 16th century editions of his works, will stimulate an interest in the thoughts and teachings of
this great man whose ideas find astonishingly true parallel in the findings of modern science, medicine
and occult philosophy.
The immense research-work necessary for this task is being carried forward by a Paracelsus society in
Einsiedeln, Switzerland, Paracelsus’ birthplace, where all the necessary available material is being
collected. This little volume, written by a member of the Society, may help to dispel the erroneous ideas
about Paracelsus which, until now and because of lack of translated material by which to judge the value
of his work, have been all that was and is known about him.