Swiss physician, philosopher, iatrochemical alchemist, astrologer and charlatan, born in Eisnsiedeln, canton of Switzerland, which revolutionized the medicine of its time by anticipating homeopathy and the use of chemistry in treatment doctor. Son of a renowned doctor, Wilhelm von Hohenheim, he began his studies in Villach and then moved to Würzburg, Germany, where he became a disciple of an abbot, Trithemium, dedicated to alchemy and occultism.
He left Würzburg (1515) and began a true pilgrimage to study and practice surgical medicine and chemistry across Europe. He graduated in medicine in Vienna, received his doctorate in Ferrara, and adopted the name Paracelsus, which means superior to Celsus (Aul Cornelius Celsus, famous Roman physician of the first century). He wandered through Europe as the living transition between the ancient Craft, alchemical, astrological and kabbalistic, obedient only to the Hippocratic and Galenic principles, and the new Medicine, which assimilated new methods and new teachings resulting from remarkable discoveries that took place in all sectors of pathology, therapy, surgery, pharmacy and science physicochemical.
Innovative and creative, he traveled throughout most of Europe and the Orient, always accompanied by an entourage of disciples, exercising his profession from city to city. He served as a military surgeon in the War of the Netherlands (1518) and returned to Germany (1526), practicing medicine in Strasbourg, Tübingen, and Freiburg. He introduced the concept of disease to medicine and used the experimental method, introducing opium, mercury, zinc oxide and other chemical preparations in therapeutics.
This Swiss-German produced the first manual of surgery, Die kleine chirurgia (1528). With the publication of Die grosse Wundartzney (1536), he gained fame and wealth. He gave the best description of syphilis ever recorded and assured that the disease could be cured with doses of mercury (1530). He discovered that the miners' disease was silicosis and not divine punishment, as was believed, and he enunciated some of the principles that would be rescued in the 19th century by Hahnemann, founder of homeopathy.
His behavior contrary to the corporation of doctors and apothecaries cost him many class hostilities while his prestige grew due to his unquestionable competence. He proclaimed, when professor and official physician of Basel, the extinction, as obsolete, of the principles and of the theories of Hippocrates, Galen and the Arab doctors, burning their treatises in the square public. He was even imprisoned in Nordlinger, Germany, as a liar.
He is considered the originator of modern pharmacology and homeopathy as well. In his work Paramirum highlighted the importance of clinical observation of the patient. In alchemist experiments, he sought the search for the balm for the cure of all ailments, which he called the mummy. His greatest virtue was to use his knowledge of alchemy to create medicines and not to transform metals into gold.
Puffed up by his success, he claimed to be in possession of the universal panacea and died insane, in the convent-hospital of Saint-Etienne, Salzburg, now Austria. He left several published works, such as Opus Chirurgicum, Paragranum and De gradibus. Paracelsism: the medical system of Paracelsus that decried Galenism and gave mineral medicines an importance they did not have before.
Picture copied from MML/UTMB's ONLINE PORTRAIT GALLERY website
http://library.utmb.edu/portraits/portlist.htm
Source: http://www.dec.ufcg.edu.br/biografias/
Order P - Biography - Brazil School