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With its innovative studies and its extensive catalogue of texts erroneously attributed to Paracelsus (1493/4-1541), this volume explores largely overlooked aspects of the Paracelsian movement in Renaissance and early modern medicine, science, natural philosophy, theology and religion.

“A vibrant, original portrait of a man of contradictions,” the Renaissance-era Swiss father of modern medicine (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, who called himself Paracelsus, stands at the cusp of medieval and modern times. A contemporary of Luther, an enemy of the medical establishment, a scourge of the universities, an alchemist, an army surgeon, and a radical theologian, he attracted myths even before he died. His fantastic journeys across Europe and beyond were said to be made on a magical white horse, and he was rumored to carry the elixir of life in the pommel of his great broadsword. His name was linked with Faust, who bargained with the devil. Who was the man behind these stories? Some have accused him of being a charlatan, a windbag who filled his books with wild speculations and invented words. Others claim him to be the father of modern medicine. Philip Ball exposes a more complex truth in The Devil’s Doctor—one that emerges only by entering Paracelsus’s time. He explores the intellectual, political, and religious undercurrents of the sixteenth century and looks at how doctors really practiced, at how people traveled, and at how wars were fought. For Paracelsus was a product of an age of change and strife, of renaissance and reformation. And yet by uniting the diverse disciplines of medicine, biology, and alchemy, he assisted, almost despite himself, in the birth of science and the emergence of the age of rationalism. Praise for The Devil’s Doctor “An enlivening portrait that will spark interest in [Paracelsus’s] role in the rise of science.” —Booklist “A true iconoclast, [Paraclesus] inhabited an ideological landscape somewhere between the medieval and the modern. Ball effectively places Paracelsus in the larger context of Renaissance magic and philosophy, and of a turbulent period. . . . Worth the effort.” —Kirkus Reviews

Throughout his controversial life, the alchemist, physician, and social-religious radical known as Paracelsus combined traditions that were magical and empirical, scholarly and folk, learned and artisanal. He read ancient texts and then burned “the best” of them. He endorsed both Catholic and Reformation beliefs, but he also believed devoutly in a female deity. He traveled constantly, learning and teaching a new form of medicine based on the experience of miners, bathers, alchemists, midwives, and barber-surgeons. He argued for changes in the way the body was understood, how disease was defined, and how treatments were created, but he was also moved by mystical speculations, an alchemical view of nature, and an intriguing concept of creation. Bringing to light the ideas, diverse works, and major texts of this important Renaissance figure, Bruce T. Moran tells the story of how alchemy refashioned medical practice, showing how Paracelsus’s tenacity and endurance changed the medical world for the better and brought new perspectives to the study of nature.

This book examines the relationship of medicine to those intellectual and social changes which historians call the Renaissance. The contributors describe how the whole range of medicine, from practical therapeutics to surgery, anatomy and pharmacy, was developing. Some important questions about the nature of medicine as it was taught and practised are raised. These include the continuing vigour of Arabic and scholastic medicine, how this was reconciled with the renaissance love of all things Greek and the nature of medicine in different parts of Europe. The chapters are written by acknowledged experts in their subjects and are based on contributions read at a meeting called for the purpose in Cambridge and supported by the Wellcome Trust.

According to Paracelsus, Archaeus is the Inner Man. The magnetic nature of Archaeus attracts or repels other sympathetic or antipathetic forces belonging to the same plane. The number of diseases of unknown aetiology is far greater than those brought about mechanical causes, and for such diseases our physicians know no cure because, not knowing the causes, they cannot remove them. Medicine is much more an art than a science, and the best medico does the least harm. Mumia is the vehicle of Archaeus and the Elixir of Life. The remedy of all diseases or injuries that may affect the visible form dwell within the invisible body, because the latter is the seat of the power that infuses life into the former, without which the former would be dead and decaying. Mumia acts from one living being directly upon another. Cures performed by its power are effective and safe. But such cures are not understood by the vulgar because they are the results of the action of invisible entities, and what is invisible cannot be comprehended by the ignorant. Sympathetic cure is the transplantation of a disease from a human to an animal or plant that is healthy and strong. Conversely, a disease cured in one person will appear in another; and love between two persons of the opposite sex may thus be created, and magnetic links be established between persons living at distant places, because there is only one Universal Principle of Life, and by its power all beings are sympathetically connected.