Paracelsus,

Theophrastus Bombast Von Hohenheim (1493-1541), who called himself Paracelsus, applied chemistry to effect medical cures and fathered a field called iatrochemistry. His break with the ancient medical doctrines of Galen was total and his tone intolerant and bombastic. He is recognized as having introduced experiment and observation into medical treatment. 

Rather than search for Paracelsan quotes, we borrow from the novel by Evan S. Connell, The Alchymist s Journal in order to gain insight into his mind and style  

Should it be God s will to instruct an alchymist at his art He will dispense understanding at the appropriate season. But if by this wisdom He concludes that any man was unfit or should He decide that irrevocable mischief would ensue, then that sanction is withheld. 

FIGURE 96. Title page of the Basilica Chymica (Frankfurt, 1611) by Oswald Croll, perhaps the major early source of Paracelsan chemical lore. 

The book s beautiful frontispiece depicts the Alchemical Dream Team  

Graedel, T. E., and Crutzen, Paul J. (1993). Atmospheric Change An Earth System Per-speaive. New York W. H. Freeman. 

Stratospheric Ozone An Electronic Textbook. Available from http //www.ccpo.odu. edu/SEES/ozone/oz class.htm . 

Palladium metal, like platinum metal, is silvery-white and Instrons and has malleable and ductile properties. It has the face-centered cubic crystal structure. It forms a fluoride, Pdp4 (brick-red), and other halides Pdp2 (pale violet), a-PdCb (dark red), PbBr2 (red black), and Pdl2 (black). Pd metal can absorb up to 935 times its own volume of hydrogen molecules. When the composition reaches about PdHo.5, the substance becomes a semiconductor. 

Palladium can form complexes in a variety of oxidation states. Table 1 contains some examples. 

Palladium has extensive use as a catalyst in hydrogenation and dehydrogenation reactions, due to its capacity of combination with hydrogen. Palladium films are used as electrical contacts in connectors. Palladium-silver and palladium-nickel alloys are used to substitute for gold in jewelry. 

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In the earlier part of the sixteenth century Paracelsus gave a new direction to alchemy by declaring that its true object was not the making of gold but the preparation of medicines. This union of chemistry with medieine was one characteristic goal of iatrochemists, of whom he was the predeeessor. The search for the elixir of life had usually... 

Opium is the dried, powdered sap of the unripe seed pod of Papaver somniferum, a poppy plant indigenous to Asia minor. Theophrastus described its medical properties in the third century BC, but the Sumerians, ca BC 4000, probably perceived its utility. Arab physicians knew of the dmg, and Arab traders carried it to the Orient where it was used as a treatment for dysentery. Paracelsus is credited with repopularizing the dmg in western Europe in the early sixteenth century by formulating opium into "laudanum", which is still in use. More than 20 different alkaloids (qv) of two different classes comprise 25% of the weight of dry opium. The benzylisoquinolines, characterized by papaverine [58-74-2] (1.0%), a smooth muscle relaxant, and noscapine [128-62-1] (6.0%), an antitussive agent, do not have any analgesic effects. The phenanthrenes, the second group, are the more common and include 10% morphine (1, = R = H), 0.5% codeine [76-57-3], C gH2 N03, (1, R = H, R = CH3), and 0.2 thebaine [115-37-7], C 2H2 N03, (2). 

Natural and synthetic chemicals affect every phase of our daily Hves ia both good and noxious manners. The noxious effects of certain substances have been appreciated siace the time of the ancient Greeks. However, it was not until the sixteenth century that certain principles of toxicology became formulated as a result of the thoughts of Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim-Paracelsus (1493—1541). Among a variety of other achievements, he embodied the basis for contemporary appreciation of dose—response relationships ia his often paraphrased dictum "Only the dose makes a poison."... 

Paracelsus, a Swiss physician of the sixteenth century, stated that everything is toxic, it is just the dose that matters. This statement still holds true 500 years after Paracelsus developed it to defend the use of toxic compounds such as lead and mercury in the treatment of serious diseases such as syphilis. Chemical compounds cause their toxic effects by inducing changes in cell physiology and biochemistry, and an understanding of cellular biology is a prerequisite if one wishes to understand the nature of toxic reactions. 

The concept of dose response in pharmacology has been known and discussed for some time. A prescription written in 1562 for hyoscyamus and opium for sleep clearly states, If you want him to sleep less, give him less [13], It was recognized by one of the earliest physicians, Paracelsus (1493-1541), that it is only the dose that makes something beneficial or harmful All things are poison, and nothing is without poison. The Dosis alone makes a thing not poison. ... 

Ellern (Ref 4, pp26—7 65—6) reports that Paracelsus (1490-1541), physician and philosopher on the nature of man and the origin of sickness, seems to have been the fust to discover the element of fire in the residue of the pyrogenic... 

Pagel s main work is his authoritative study of Paracelsus Walter Pagel, Paracelsus (Basel, second revised edition 1982). 

Pagel, Paracelsus (1982), 105-12. Also see Walter Pagel, Paracelsus als Natur-mystiker in Antoine Faivre and Rolf Christian Zimmermann (eds.), Epochen der Maturmystik (Berlin Erich Schmidt, 1979), 85. 

Carlos GiUy, Theophrastia Sancta Paracelsianism as a religion in conflict with the established Churches in Ole Peter GreU (ed.), Paracelsus The Man and his Reputation, his ideas and their Transformation (Leiden Brill 1998), 151-185. 

The concept of a Cosmic Man, the All, the soul of both the universe and humanity, was a significant factor in the theosophy of Paracelsus (1493-1541). The first visual depiction of this Being in the form of Christ-Anthropos, the Son of Man, appeared in Khunrath s alchemical treatise in 1595 (fig. 3). It was developed into the image of the Macrocosmic Man by Robert Fludd who was a prolihc encyclopaedist of Hermetic, medical and mechanical knowledge. In his Philosophia Sacra (1626), Fludd recalled texts in the Hermetic corpus (ca. second century AD) which recounted how Man ( Anthropos ), the divine Son of God, had created the world by uniting with Nature ( Physis ). ... 

The text has been translated in Jolande Jacobi (ed.), Paracelsus Selected Writings, Bollingen Series, 28 (New York Pantheon Books, 1951), 31 ff. 

Rudolf Hartmuth, Theophrast von Hohenheim (Paracelsus) Physician and Apostle of the New Creation in Hansjurgen Goertz (ed.). Profiles of Radical Rformers (Ontario Herald Press, 1982), 255-68. 

Paracelsus, Philosophia ad Athenienses in Sudhoff, Paracelsus. Samtliche Werke, 1, 13, 389-423 and also der Grossen Wunderarznei in Sudhoff, Paracelsus. Samtliche Werke, 1, 7-487. 

From his speech against Galen, Avicenna and Hippocrates in Basle on 5 June, 1527, see Sudhoff, Paracelsus. Samtliche Werke (1931) vol. 4, 3—4. 

Through Paracelsus both the theological and the magical aspects of the Hermetica entered alchemical theory. He united the Pauline teachings on the inner Holy Spirit of Christ with the concept of Physis taught by Trismegistus ... 

Rudolf Hartmuth, Theophrast von Hohenheim (Paracelsus) Physician and... 

In the early sixteenth century Reuchlin and Paracelsus had found in kabbalah a new justification for the practice of philosophy. Reuchlin had specifically sought to provide the Renaissance magus with an elite role in society through the practice of kabbalah. As a sign of... 

The doctrine of Christ as the Messiah, the universal healer of both soul and body, was the fundamental principle of Fludd s medicine,as he explains hominis intemi per Christum regeneratio. From Paracelsus, he borrowed the idea of the vivifying powers of nature, but the principle of regeneration itself came from God through the form of the sun. Fludd stated Sol sit vitae sedes. ... 

Towering above all his other sources was Paracelsus who provided Fludd with the account of the origins of the material and spiritual universe from within God s own Being. In the Phibsophia ad Athenienses he had explained how God had originally separated the elements from each other in the manner of an alchemist. Out of insubstantial prime matter there had emerged the four proto-elements ... 

Sudhoff, Paracelsus. Sdmtliche Werke, part I vol. 13, 389-423 Philosophia ad Athenienses. ... 

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