Paracelsus tria prima theory

By the end of the seventeenth century, the old traditional elements from Aristotle had been either abandoned by the new Paracelsian iatrochymists or absorbed under new terminology. Paracelsus tria prima of mercury, SULPHUR, and salt became the new set of elements or principles, each more narrowly focused on a single property than had been the four elements of Aristotle. Yet the tria prima clearly derived from the older tradition. Salt assumed the role of the Aristotelian earth, while sulphur took that of FIRE. The mercury of Paracelsus rather absorbed the characteristics of both AIR and water, becoming the carrier of all spiritual, i.e., volatile qualities of the products of fire analysis. Mercury also carried the basic metallic properties from the mercury/sulphur theory of metals brought to the Latin West from Arabic alchemy. 

In one particular, however, Paracelsus contributed a theoretical concept which exerted a dominating influence on the theory of following centuries. This was the doctrine known as the tria prima, the idea that all matter from... 

This theory of the tria prima which is reiterated and discussed very extensively in numerous treatises of Paracelsus, made a strong appeal to the public of his own and later centuries. It indeed almost completely dominated chemical theory and philosophy until the rise of the theory of phlogiston. It was adopted by the authors of the later works ascribed to Basil Valentine and Johann and Isaac Hollandus, and so long as these works were believed to have been written in the fifteenth century, Paracelsus was naturally supposed to have acquired this concept from the works of those writers. 

It is difficult to see in the characteristics and properties of the three earths of Becher any substantial improvement on the tria prima of Paracelsus and his successors, other than the avoidance of the use of the three names which were in common use in two different meanings. For the three principles of that name, as chemists of that school took great pains constantly to explain, were not the same as the common substances so named. Nevertheless, the new name terra pinguis or fatty earth for the older sulphur, as the substance which departs in combustion, certainly gave the stimulus which incited Stahl and his followers to develop the influential phlogistic hypothesis and Becher thus played a not unimportant part in the history of chemical theory. 

Medieval alchemists had generally adhered to a dyad theory, in which Sulfur and Mercury were the principles of all metals and change was produced by the interaction of these two principles. Substances rich in Sulfur were more combustible, while those rich in Mercury were less so. Paracelsus took this dyad theory and added a third principle of Salt to it. His three principles—the tria prima, or three first things—were able to explain the alchemical transformations of all bodies. This material trinity matched the Holy Trinity in heaven as well as the three principles of which we are made vital spirit, soul, and body. Important in this scheme are correspondences between the great world, the... 

When Robert Boyle began his work, alchemy was alive and well. It was widely although far from universally used in medicine. The search for the philosophers stone was still taken seriously by leading natural philosophers, and many kings and princes were keen to have their own alchemists. Corpuscularianism was also alive and well, and Boyle was able to combine the latest brand of corpuscularianism with alchemy, to powerful effect. He did not accept Paracelsus s element theory, nor was he keen on Van Helmont s and he was not much impressed by the way in which seventeenth-century iatrochemists had added phlegm and earth to Paracelsus s tria prima. But he did believe that transmutation was possible and that the alchemical production of gold by multiplica-... 

He accepted the Aristotelian theory of the four elements, but he extended the sulfur-mercury theory and applied his theory to all substances, not just metals. He did this by adding a third basic constituent, salt, as Rhazes had done seven hundred years previously. For Paracelsus, salt represented the principle of incombustibility and non-volatility. This theory which became known as tria prima, referred to three basic qualities, not to ordinary mercury, sulfur, and salt ... 

In the alchemical worldview, Mercury refers to the mercurial quality of matter rather than to the element we now call mercury. The alchemists believed that metals differed from one another because they contained greater or lesser amounts of particular qualities. According to Paracelsus theory of tria prima, the three fundamental properties of matter were represented by mercury sulfur, and salt.22 Sulfur was associated with Sol, the sun, and thus with the Masculine Principle, while mercury was closely associated with silver, the Moon, and the Feminine Principle.23 Salt—the fixed, immutable, quality of matter—was associated with body and earth. 

Rise and Spread of Alchemy. The Nature of Alchemy. Alchemical Theory. The Sulphur-Mercury Theory. Alchemical Representations of the Sulphur-Mercury Theory. The Emerald Table of Hermes. The Tria Prima of Paracelsus. 

Paracelsus may have heard of the treatment in his travels (Bhava Mista at this same time prescribed mercury for the syphilis brought into India by the Portuguese), or the discovery may have been serendipitous, based on Paracelsus adoption of the extension of the mercury-sulfur theory of the Islamic alchemists to a tria prima consisting of mercury (soul), sulfur (spirit), and salt (body). But while Paracelsus was on this one occasion very successful, there is no record of the number of people he adversely affected while experimenting with potions that were not effective, and it may have been considerable. He did however have a talent for observation for instance he described the relationship between cretinism in children and the existence of goiters in their parents. His greatest contribution to medicine may have been the idea that doctors should act on what they observe rather than blindly following accepted authority. 

Traditional accounts of Robert Boyle s matter theory, such as Marie Boas Hall s 1952 Establishment of the Mechanical Philosophy, explicitly view Boyle s mechanical philosophy as an importation from physics, which he grafted onto a radically rewritten chemistry. As Boas Hall puts it, Boyle s new chemistry was a chemistry in which was incorporated a physicist s view of matter. The physicist s matter theory refers, of course, to the very corpuscularian philosophy to which Boyle devoted his life s work, the explanation of phenomena in terms of matter and motion at the microlevel. According to Boas Hall, this physicist s theory was radically opposed to the chymical theory that predated Boyle and that he sometimes criticized—particularly the theory of three principles, mercury, sulfur, and salt, invented by Paracelsus in the early sixteenth century. The Paracelsian concept of the tria prima was, to paraphrase Boas Hall, a theory of forms and qualities, an animistic rewriting of Aristotle in the language of alchemy. A brief glance at Steven Shapin s 2996 The Scientific Revolution will show that the approach of Boas Hall is alive and well, hr his treatment of the mechanical philosophy as a whole. 

Paracelsus made an important contribution to chemical theory. He extended the sulphur-mercury theory of the Islamic alchemists by adding a third principle, namely salt. Thus, when wood burned, the combustible component was identified with sulphur, the volatile component with mercury and the ashes that remained with salt. The composition of all substances could be expressed in terms of these three principles, or tria prima. As in the previous theories, sulphur, mercury and... 

The tria prima was the brainchild of the Swiss physician, philosopher and alchemist Theophrastus von Hohenheim, best known as Paracelsus (1493-1541). According to Paracelsus s mature theory, all matter was comprised of Salt, Sulphur and Mercury [2]. His idea was clearly an extension and augmentation of the medieval alchemical theory of Sulphur and Mercury, which has been referred to in the previous chapter. Paracelsus modified the Sulphur-Mercury theory in two major ways by adding a third principle, Salt, and by expanding it beyond metals. The three principles came to constitute the building blocks of aU beings in the universe. 

As proof of the tria prima, Paracelsus used the example of green wood, which when burnt gives out flame (the Sulphur ), smoke ( Mercury ) and ash ( Salt ). This example was used by other Paracelsian followers as well [7]. Although called an experiment by Boyle, it was a very simplistic and not especially alchemical example rather, it was more of a rhetorical device to clarify the theory and capture people s imagination [8]. Moreover, it was not a very solid or original argument against the Aristotelian philosophy, which used the same experiment to prove the four elements earth (ash), water (sap), air (smoke) and fire [7]. Indeed, a supporter of alchemy like Daniel Sennert found that the wood example was neither relevant nor chemically correct [9]. 

There was no place for prime matter in Helmont s system. His theory of elements replaced it by water, and likewise left no room for Paracelsus s tria prima and Aristotle s element of fire, which were not found in Genesis 1." If fire and the tria prima were not elements, that left only air, water and earth. Helmont inferred from the Biblical story of creation the primacy of water and air, for the spirit on the primeval waters (Genesis 1.2) could be understood, as it was by some Church Fathers, to be wind or air ... 

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