Paracelsus was a doctor, chemist, lecturer, and reformer. His novel doctrines gained him many followers. He expressed novel ideas for the treatment of wounds, disbelieving in the use of boiling oil for the purification of gunshot wounds. His "Chirurgia magna" went through many editions and translations. The first edition cited here was unauthorized by Paracelsus and was criticized by him.

Paracelsus suggested the hereditary transmission of syphilis and advocated mercury internally, as an antisyphilitic. He called the disease “French gonorrhoea” and thus started the confusion over the geographic origins of syphilis which lasted until the 19th century.

Paracelsus has been called by some “the pioneer of modern chemists” and by others “uncouth, boorish, vain, ignorant and pretentious”. His De gradibus contains most of his innovations in Chemical therapeutics. 

Paracelsus’s book on the diseases of miners was the first full monograph on the diseases of an occupational group. The first section covers the diseases, mainly pulmonary affections, of miners, including the etiology, pathogenesis, symptomatology and therapy. The second book describes the diseases of smelter workers and metallurgists, and the third section discusses diseases caused by mercury. English translation by G. Rosen in Four treatises of Theophrastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus, ed. by H. E. Sigerist, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1941. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

In this work on the “diseases that deprive man of his reason” Paracelsus anticipated the descriptive method in psychiatry, giving a purely medical account of the clinical manifestations of epilepsy, mania, and hysteria refuting previous theories that these diseases were caused by demonic possession or other supernatural means. He was “the first to differentiate the sexual components and the unconcious factors in the development ol hysteria” (Zilboorg). English translation by G. Zilboorg in H.E. Sigerist (ed.), Four treatises of…Paracelsus, Baltimore, 1941.

First edition of Paracelsus's collected works. Though all the autographs of Paracelsus's writings were later lost, Huber, who was born shortly after Paracelsus's death, was able to collect a great number of autographs and early copies, so he was able to edit a complete edition of the medical and natural philosophic works of Paracelsus in 10 volumes. Huber's edition of Paracelsus's surgical writings (Chirurgische Bucher und Schriften) was issued after Huber's death, in Strasbourg in 1605. Links to facsimiles of the 10 vols. plus the 1605 edition at the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek from the Zurich Paracelsus Project at this link.

Paracelsus was the first to note the coincidence of cretinism and endemic goitre. It was not until the 19th century that the possibility of the occurrence of cretinism in adults was entertained. Partial English translation in No. 2241

‘It is apparent that by the 1640’s Paracelsian medicine had gained momentum in Italy and that iatrochemical theories were being adopted by a number of Italian physicians. […] In 1644 there appeared the first Italian translation from Paracelsus, made by ... Ludovico Locatelli, who included a version of Paracelsus’ Erklärung über etliche Aphorismen des Hippokrates in his Teatro d’arcani. Unlike Bardi, Locatelli was a fervent Paracelsian; he espoused Paracelsus’ medicine and philosophy, and explicitly rejected traditional medicine. Locatelli, who travelled to Germany in 1642, maintained that chemical reactions took place in the human body that were the same as those produced in the laboratory. Natural bodies contained a subtle and pure spiritual substance that chemists could extract and use for their remedies. Following Bovio, Locatelli attacked Galenists as ignorant and greedy, and promoted a great number of chemical remedies, like arcanum corallinum, tartar, vitriol, mercurius vitae, and aurum potabile, most of them taken from Paracelsus. (A. Clericuzio, ‘Chemical Medicine and Paracelsianism in Italy, 1550–1650’, in M. Pelling and S. Mandelbrote, eds., The Practice of Reform in Health, Medicine, and Science, 1500–2000, 2005, p. 77). Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Paracelsus was first to write on miners’ diseases, the first to establish the relationship between cretinism and endemic goitre and to note the geographic differences in diseases. Sudhoff was the author of what remains the definitive bibliography of the many early editions of Paracelsus' writings. J. Hargrave published a biography in 1951. See also W. Pagel’s Paracelsus, Basel & New York, Karger, 1958. Since then many other studies of Paracelsus have been published.

Osler wrote that Paracelsus was “the Luther of medicine, for when authority was paramount he stood out for independent study.”

Annotation from the Zurich Paracelsus Edition online:

"After the failure of the Matthiessen edition of Paracelsus' theological writings in 1935, Sudhoff succeeded in engaging the newly appointed Leipzig professor of the history of theology Heinrich Bornkamm (1901-1977) for this project. Bornkamm, who later stood in a bad light for the cooperation with the Nazi regime, began preliminary work in 1938 and developed an edition program.

"Since 1941 Bornkamm has been supported by the young theologian Kurt Goldammer (1916-1997), who later became editor-in-chief in 1953. He was supported. Goldammer himself found an experienced assistant in the specialist for German studies Karl-Heinz Weimann (1922-2006), who had presented in his PhD thesis an examination of the vocabulary used by Paracelsus.

"With the determined help of Weimann, it was possible for Goldammer to present several volumes in short succession. However, after Weimann's departure in 1962, the edition lost its momentum. Only a few further volumes were published and at much greater intervals, a process that eventually led to the final failure of the edition. Of the planned fourteen volumes, only six were completed together with a supplementary volume and an index. They are in print at the Franz Steiner Verlag.

"Volume 2 (1965): Ethische, soziale und politische Schriften; Schriften über Ehe, Taufe, Busse und Beichte

"Volume 3 (1986): Dogmatische und polemische Einzelschriften

"Volume 4 (1955): Auslegung des Psalters David, Teil I: Kommentar zu den Psalmen 75 (76) bis 102 (103)

"Volume 5 (1957): Auslegung des Psalters David, Teil II: Kommentar zu den Psalmen 103 (104) bis 117 (118)

"Volume 6 (1959): Auslegung des Psalters David, Teil III: Kommentar zu den Psalmen 118 (119) bis 137 (138)

"Volume 7 (1961):

• Auslegung des Psalters David, Teil IV: Kommentar zu den Psalmen 138 (139) bis 150
• Auslegung über die zehen gebott gottes
• Fragmentarische Entwürfe zu den zehn Geboten (Lamentationes in praecepta)
• Jesajakommentar (In Esaiam prophetam maximum philosophia)
• Danielkommentar (Explicatio in Danielem prophetam)

"Supplement (1973): Religiöse und sozialphilosophische Schriften in Kurzfassungen

"Register (1995): Index to volumes 4 to 7

"The project began as a exhibition in the Basle University Library to commemorate the major anniversaries of the birth and death of Paracelsus (1493–1541). Not only did he work and teach in Basle, but many of his writings were first published there by his followers. Printers like Heinrich Petri and Peter Perna supported the new medicine both for its therapeutics and for its links with evangelical religion. The conjunction of medicine, science and religion was promoted by the presence in the city of many religious exiles, such as Adam von Bodenstein and Guglielmo Gratarolo, who took advantage of willing printers to publish their beliefs in treatises in German and in Latin, the universal language of scholarship. The rise of the university as a bastion of Protestant scientific learning under Zwinger and the Platter family attracted students from all over northern Europe, who took back to their homes the latest products of the Basle presses. All this is wonderfully documented in the Basle Library, whose collections of early printed books, manuscripts and autograph letters are a prime resource for students of sixteenth-century medicine and science. Not surprisingly, the 1993 exhibition was a visual and intellectual feast, and attracted large numbers of visitors.

The small catalogue then took on a life of its own, and expanded in concept and content. The list of imprints by Paracelsus and his followers, the basis for Part 2, nos. 175–210, was extended to cover medicine and science, interpreted broadly to include mathematics, geography and even rhetoric, as well as the role of the printers in supporting, and at times directing, evangelical reform in a godly city. In all, 766 items are listed; 174 in Part 1, covering the period before 1550; 36 in Part 2; 506 in Part 3, non-Paracelsian imprints after 1550; and 10 additions in the Introduction. Excluding the introduction and index, this bibliographical cornucopia runs to 3694 pages, an average of five pages per printed book. When the strictly bibliographical description rarely runs to more than ten lines, and the concluding paragraph giving details of the provenance of each copy (or often copies) usually to less than that, one may wonder how Dr Hieronymus has managed to fill so many pages.

Each entry begins with a short listing of the author, title, place and date of printing, the name of the printer, and the size of the book. This is then followed by a description of the book's contents, composition, history, and significance in the history of medicine and science. Often there are comments about the place of the book in the history of printing in Basle, and the entry ends with a description of exemplars in the Basle Library. Often a reproduction of the title page is given, sometimes in half-page length, but usually full-page, and even as folding plates attached to the inside back cover. But these reproductions range widely to show some of the illustrations, manuscript notes of ownership or commentary, and even some of the manuscript documentation and drafts that reveal the history of the book's publication. No copy of 413, John Caius' very rare edition of some minor works of Galen, 1557, survives in Basle. But in the collections of the Frey-Grynaeum Institute there exists the copy of the fourth of these works, De ossibus, that Caius prepared for his printer, Oporinus. The illustrations show how Caius inserted his corrections into the 1543 Paris edition before sending the volume to Basle. These abundant reproductions provide a remarkable visual resource for the history of medicine and of printing (one illustration, I know, has already helped in identifying a damaged volume in a London library). An electronic version of some of the entries, incorporating still more illustrations, can be found on the Library's website: www.ub.unibas.ch/kadmos/gg/; or via their ‘Virtuelle Bibliothek’ (Handschriften/Griechische Geist)."

"It tells one story if one begins at the beginning, and another if one begins at the end, with the seven indexes that form volume 5. A mere glance at its first six indexes, of dates, authors and titles, printers and their location, addressees, owners, and the composers of commentary, dedications or liminal poems, opens windows onto the early modern republic of letters. But this information is dwarfed by that in index 7, a gallimaufry of names and topics ranging from God and ruins to brain disease, the rhinoceros and the wondrous Johannes Baptista Campofulgosus. As with Zwinger's Theatrum vitae humanae, 1571, the subject of possibly the longest notice in the catalogue, all human life is here. Anyone with an interest in early modern science who looks up any name or word is likely to find unexpected information or a new context for familiar material. But, I suspect, not even 134 pages of double-columned index will reveal everything." (quotations from the review by Vivian Nutton, "Basel, printing, and the early modern intellectual world," Med. Hist. 2007 Apr 1; 51(2): 246–249.

A digital edition from the Center for Medieval Studies Zurich:

https://www.paracelsus.uzh.ch/index.html

"Alterius not sit, qui suus esse potest."