Having come froma hospital laboratory inthe UK National HealthService, I was impressedby the scale and opera-tion of Dr. Ware’s labo-ratory, and I thought itwould be nice to have arecord to take back toEngland to show mycolleagues. The film isan edited version of theSuper 8 film strip re-cord, which lay in vari-

ous closets in the UK and the US for nearly 40 yearsbefore I realized it might be of interest to the HistoryDivision of the AACC. In 2010, the film was convertedto a DVD, and I wrote and recorded a commentary.

The video is available at http://www.youtube.com/user/AACCHistory.

Author Contributions: All authors confirmed they have contributed tothe intellectual content of this paper and have met the following 3 re-quirements: (a) significant contributions to the conception and design,acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (b) draftingor revising the article for intellectual content; and (c) final approval ofthe published article.

Authors’ Disclosures or Potential Conflicts of Interest: No authorsdeclared any potential conflicts of interest.

Role of Sponsor: The funding organizations played no role in thedesign of study, choice of enrolled patients, review and interpretationof data, or preparation or approval of manuscript.

DOI: 10.1373/clinchem.2011.166538

International Year of Chemistry 2011

Paracelsus:In Praise of Mavericks

Marek H. Dominiczak*

Philippus Theophrastus Aureolus Bombastus von Ho-henheim (1493–1541), who adopted the name Paracel-sus, was born in Einsiedeln, Switzerland. Although hestudied medicine, there is no evidence that he ever ob-tained a medical degree.

Paracelsus lived in a time of extraordinary intellec-tual turmoil, during the late stages of the Italian Renais-sance and at the time of the Reformation. He waswidely exposed to humanist thought, which put em-phasis on classical education and the knowledge of an-cient Greek texts. In Florence, Marcilio Ficino (1433–1499) had translated Plato into Latin. He had alsotranslated the Corpus Hermeticum, an Egyptian textdating back to fourth century BCE. Ficino believed inthe link between the Corpus, Plato’s philosophy, and

the Christian revelation, and postulated the idea of aspirit unifying macrocosm and microcosm, nature andhuman beings. There were extensive exchanges be-tween the Italians and northern European thinkers,such as Erasmus of Rotterdam. Then in 1517, MartinLuther sparked a theological revolution. Politics andreligion became intertwined with the budding newscience.

Paracelsus was an eccentric, wandering scholarwho achieved wide medical fame. He traveled exten-sively to such places as Jerusalem, Moscow, Constanti-nople, Algiers, and Scandinavia. The aim of his travelswas to gather “hidden knowledge,” which he soughtboth at universities and by exploring local folk medi-cine. He was involved in alchemy and the explorationof “natural magic.” His involvement in this quasi-experimental practice made him suspicious in the eyesof the medical establishment. Ironically, it also madehim a precursor of modern chemistry.

Being involved in chemistry and experimentationwas regarded at the time as a sort of manual labor,

College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow,UK.* Address correspondence to the author at: Department of Biochemistry, Gart-

navel General Hospital, Glasgow G12 0YN, UK. Fax �44-141-211-3452; e-mailmarek.dominiczak@gla.ac.uk.

International Year of Chemistry 2011

932 Clinical Chemistry 57:6 (2011)

inferior to intellectual pursuits. And yet the combina-tion of philosophy, theology, and chemistry that wasalchemy was the initial stage of the departure from re-liance on scholastic theory to practice-based explora-tion. In other words, “natural magic” was a way of deal-ing with the unknown. Perhaps the most importantidea of the alchemists was their conviction that apartfrom the spiritual and the mystical, knowledge will alsocome from the experimental investigation of matter.The contribution of alchemy to early chemistry is nowbeing reassessed. Three American medical libraries–the Hahnemann University Library, the National Li-brary of Medicine, and the Washington UniversityMedical Library (St. Louis)– organized an exhibitioncelebrating the 500th anniversary of the birth of Para-celsus; and the 2011 meeting of the American Associa-tion for the Advancement of Science devoted a lectureto it.

Paracelsus criticized the medical establishment forits preoccupation with scholastic dogma. He believedin the presence of Ficino’s “life spirit,” both in the or-ganic world and in the inorganic world. His other ideasincluded a belief that disease enters the body from theoutside—as opposed to an imbalance of the 4 humorsproposed by the Roman physician Galen. He also pio-neered the use of chemicals in medicine, particularlymetals such as antimony and mercury. His writingscombined alchemy, religion, theology, and medicine,but unfortunately they were expressed in a rather mud-dled Latin. On top of that, his severely critical pro-nouncements contained a high dose of inflammatoryarrogance, which further complicated the way his ideaswere received.

The portrait of Paracelsus presented here (Fig. 1) isa copy of a lost work by the Flemish painter QuentinMassys (also called Matsys or Metsys; 1465/6 –1530).Two more copies of this painting were made in the 17thcentury—the first by the greatest Antwerp painter, Pe-ter Paul Rubens, in 1617 or 1618 (it is now in Brussels)and the second (now in Uppsala, Sweden) by a pupil ofRubens.

Massys became the most important painter inAntwerp, which at the beginning of the 16th centurywas an up-and-coming merchant city. He belonged tothe circle of humanists that included Erasmus, whoseportrait he painted in 1517. He worked predominantlyin the Flemish tradition, which went back to such mas-ters as Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden. Thistradition was characterized by a high level of detail andthe use of bright, rich, contrasting pigments. Massys,however, was also influenced by Leonardo da Vinci,particularly by Leonardo’s caricatures. These elementsof both northern and Italian styles in his work under-line the many exchanges that took place between the

northern cities and Italy during that period. Italianpainters influenced northern ones, but, on the otherhand, it was from Flanders that the technique of oilpainting was brought to Venice. Massys used the con-vention of “a scholar in his study” in his other portraits.Paracelsus, however, perhaps in tune with his itinerantspirit, is painted with a landscape background.

Most of Paracelsus’ writings were published afterhis death—and they kept inciting controversy oversubsequent decades. He was accused of leading “a le-gion of homicide physicians,” and his books werecalled “heretical and scandalous.” After decades of hotdebates, however, a new pharmacopeia published in1618 by the Royal College of Physicians in London con-tained paracelsian remedies. In 1647, the Jardin du Roiin Paris (the Royal Herb Garden, now Jardin des Plan-tes, part of the National Natural History Museum) ap-pointed its first professor of chemistry in France. Afascinating period of the development of chemistry as ascience commenced. In a sense, the maverick won.

Fig. 1. Unknown Flemish artist, first half of the 17thcentury.

Presumed portrait of the physician Paracelsus (1493–1541). Oil on canvas (height, 0.72 m; width, 0.54 m).Louvre, Paris. ©Courtesy of the Bridgeman Picture Library.

International Year of Chemistry 2011

Clinical Chemistry 57:6 (2011) 933

Further Reading

Ball P. The devil’s doctor. London: William Hei-nemann; 2006. 435 p.

Alchemists, ancient and modern. The Economist2011 Feb 26:81–2.

Pauwels H, Roberts-Jones F, Laureyssens W,Heesterbeek-Bert C, Pacco M, De Wilde E, Bussers H.Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels. The Museum ofAncient Art, Brussels. Brussels: Ludion-Cultura Nos-tra; 1996. p 36 – 42.

U.S. National Library of Medicine. Paracelsus andthe medical revolution of the Renaissance. A 500th anni-versary celebration. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/paracelsus/index.html.

Allen MR. Humanism. In: Popkin RH, ed. ThePimlico history of Western philosophy. London: Pim-lico; 1999. p 292–303.

Copenhaver B, Monfasani J. Platonism. In: Pop-kin RH, ed. The Pimlico history of Western philoso-phy. London: Pimlico; 1999. p 303–15.

Audi R, ed. The Cambridge dictionary of philoso-phy. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UniversityPress; 1999. 309 p.

Author Contributions: All authors confirmed they have contributed tothe intellectual content of this paper and have met the following 3 re-quirements: (a) significant contributions to the conception and design,acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (b) draftingor revising the article for intellectual content; and (c) final approval ofthe published article.

Authors’ Disclosures or Potential Conflicts of Interest: No authorsdeclared any potential conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgment: The author thanks Miss Jacky Gardiner for excel-lent secretarial assistance.

DOI: 10.1373/clinchem.2011.165894

International Year of Chemistry 2011

934 Clinical Chemistry 57:6 (2011)