500th birthday von Paracelsus - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1993 - 100 Pfennig

Paracelsus, whose real name is Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, was born at the end of 1493 in Einsiedeln in Switzerland. His father, a doctor, was probably an illegitimate offspring of the bombast of Hohenheim. After gaining basic knowledge in a Benedictine school and in mines in Carinthia, where his father had settled around 1500, Theophrast von Hohenheim visited several universities and received his doctorate in 1516 in Ferrara to the doctor of medicine. It is followed by a restless travel life across Europe. In doing so, he acquires some interesting knowledge from the people of the street and the common people and gathers useful experiences based on folk medicine. Salzburg, Strasbourg and Basel are afterwards stations of his work. At the University of Basel, he announces his novel medicine. He holds medical lectures in German. As a result, and by the public burning of textbooks of scholastic medicine, he gets in 1528 in conflict with the faculty and his colleagues and can escape an imminent arrest only by escaping. Wanderjahre through Alsace, through Swabia, Franconia and Bavaria follow. He writes numerous medical, philosophical and theological writings and uses for the first time the pseudonym "Paracelsus", a Latinized form of his surname. In 1536, Augsburg's largest surviving medical work, Die Große Wundartzney, was published. In 1540 he settled a second time in Salzburg, where he died on the 24th of September of the following year. Paracelsus represents an extraordinary personality in the transitional period from the Middle Ages to the modern era and during the period of change of the Renaissance, Humanism and the Reformation. The defiant character of his character can already be found in his motto "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" (who can be independent, should not submit to others). Courageous and combative, with uncompromising pursuit of truth, he represents his views above all to the established doctors and pharmacists. No wonder he is dismissed from their ranks as a charlatan. As a lay theologian he emphasizes the immanence of God in the world, and he is an early pacifist. Over 200 publications in German and Latin have been written by Paracelsus. His medical works are devoted to syphilis and its healing, the occupational diseases of miners, surgery, wound treatment, healing springs and a general teaching of the causes of the diseases. On the basis of his findings in mining and metallurgy Paracelsus arrives at a chemical understanding of the organism and the doctrine of the three substance principles Sulfur (sulfur), Mercurius (Mercury) and Sal (salt). He is considered the founder of pharmaceutical chemistry (chemiatry) and the art of producing chemical medicines (latrochemistry). Minerals form an important basis. In contrast to the teachings of his time, he trusts the healing powers of nature and exposes the preventive and healing power of a natural and natural way of life. He comes to the realization that poison is a question of the dose. On the one hand Paracelsus wants to renew the medicine from scratch and relies on a practical education of the doctors, on experiment, experience, nature observation and reason. He tries to diagnose and treat diseases as part of a holistic treatment. On the other hand, he is close to Florentine Neoplatonism, considers man as a "microcosm" in close connection with the "macrocosm" and represents a cosmology and anthropology with very speculative features, including astrological, alchemical and even occult components. His medicine is based on four main pillars, alchemical remedial teaching, naturalism, cosmosophic anthropology and time-client, and medical ethics. The foundation is love. His world view is holistically shaped. He can be considered one of the precursors of modern naturopathy, chemotherapy, homeopathy and esotericism. His methods as a physician and alchemist are empirical and modern. But according to the medieval tradition, he sees himself integrated into a divine world order. Everywhere he still feels the action of hidden forces. Even during his lifetime, myths and legends grew up around his person. Even today, the spirits ignite in him, especially since his life's work can be regarded as a huge quarry, from which everyone can use his own ideas. His personality and his work are still controversial. As a physician, alchemist, pharmacist, natural philosopher and theologian, Paracelsus - with many contradictions - appears today as an earlier alternative. (Text: Bernhard Klocke, M.A., University Hohenheim)