SEVENTEENTH AND E I G H T E E N T H C E N T U R I E S 133 



Theophrastus Hohenheim was born in 1490, or somewhat later, at the 

 famous monastery for pilgrims at Maria-Einsiedeln in the Canton of Schwyz 

 in Switzerland. The name Paracelsus, by which he is best known, he him- 

 self adopted later/ His father, who is said to have been the illegitimate son 

 of a Knight of St. John of the noble family of Bombast von Hohenheim, was 

 a physician at the above monastery; his mother, who was probably a peasant 

 woman, was before her marriage a sick-nurse there. Young Theophrastus, 

 who was called after the great Athenian botanist and disciple of Aristotle, 

 grew up in poverty and remained throughout his life, in spite of his ancestors' 

 nobility, in all respects a child of the people. Nevertheless he received a 

 sound education, partly from his father and partly from two priests, friends 

 of the latter; and as a youth he was a student at Basel. However, he soon 

 wearied of scholasticism, studied alchemy for a time under Trithemius, 

 referred to above — an abbot who had established a laboratory in his monas- 

 tery — and afterwards became an apprentice at a mine in the Tyrol, where he 

 studied metallurgy and was initiated into the professional secrets of the 

 miners. Even this work, however, did not appeal to him, and he soon joined 

 the hosts of learned adventurers who ever since the Middle Ages had wan- 

 dered about Europe under the name of scbolares vagantes or mendicant stu- 

 dents. Young Hohenheim took his profession more seriously than most of 

 his colleagues; having wandered through Germany, Spain, and France, he 

 joined the army with which Christian II conquered Sweden in 15x0, as a 

 field surgeon. He thus came to Stockholm, proceeded thence to Moscow, 

 from there again — by which route is not known — to Constantinople, 

 and finally returned home. In the course of these journeys he naturally had 

 an opportunity of visiting several universities, but their official learning was 

 of far less interest to him than the experiences he was able to gain of people 

 who were at that time believed to be familiar with the occult sciences: 

 barber-surgeons, witches, gipsies, and executioners. He made such good use 

 of the medical knowledge thus gained that in 15x6 he was appointed first 

 town-physician at Basel, with the right to revise the city's pharmacopoeia 

 and to hold lectures at the University. As a practitioner he was brilliantly 

 successful with daring cures and simple, cheap medicines, while at the same 

 time he harassed his colleagues by his extremely overbearing manner. He 

 gave his course of lectures in German instead of in Latin and started by 

 ceremoniously burning the classical treatises on medicine, which naturally 

 increased the hatred of the medical profession. When, moreover, the apothe- 

 caries, embittered by his sharp criticism, intrigued against him, he had to 



1 The name Paracelsus he used as a nom de plume in some of his writings; it probably 

 means "higher than Celsus" (the Roman physician). Another name which he adopted is Au- 

 reolus Bombastus, the former meaning "golden," and the latter having been borne by his grand- 

 father. He also sometimes calls himself "Eremita," after the place of his birth. 



