Western Civilization_ Volume B_ 1300 to 1815 - Jackson J. Spielvogel [227]
I am monarcha medicorum, monarch of physicians, and I can prove to you what you cannot prove… . It was not the constellations that made me a physician: God made me… . I need not don a coat of mail or a buckler against you, for you are not learned or experienced enough to refute even one word of mine… . Let me tell you this: every little hair on my neck knows more than you and all your scribes, and my shoebuckles are more learned than your Galen and Avicenna, and my beard has more experience than all your high colleges.11
Paracelsus was not easy to get along with, and he was forced to wander from one town to another until his death in 1541.
Paracelsus rejected the work of both Aristotle and Galen and attacked the universities as centers of their moribund philosophy. He and his followers hoped to replace the traditional system with a new chemical philosophy that was based on a new understanding of nature derived from fresh observation and experiment. This chemical philosophy was in turn closely connected to a view of the universe based on the macrocosm-microcosm analogy. According to this view, a human being was a small replica (microcosm) of the larger world (macro-cosm). All parts of the universe were represented within each person. As Paracelsus said, “For the sun and the moon and all planets, as well as the stars and the whole chaos, are in man… . For what is outside is also inside; and what is not outside man is not inside. The outer and the inner are one thing.”12 In accordance with the macrocosmic-microcosmic principle, Paracelsus believed that the chemical reactions of the universe as a whole were reproduced in human beings on a smaller scale. Disease, then, was not caused by an imbalance of the four humors, as Galen had argued, but was due to chemical imbalances that were localized in specific organs and could be treated by chemical remedies.
Although others had used chemical remedies, Paracelsus and his followers differed from them in giving careful attention to the proper dosage of their chemically prepared metals and minerals. Paracelsus had turned against the Galenic principle that “contraries cure” in favor of the ancient Germanic folk principle that “like cures like.” The poison that caused a disease would be its cure if used in proper form and quantity. This use of toxic substances to cure patients was, despite its apparent effectiveness (Paracelsus did have a strong reputation for actually curing his patients), viewed by Paracelsus’s opponents as the practice of a “homicide physician.” Later generations came to view Paracelsus more favorably, and historians who have stressed Paracelsus’s concept of disease and recognition of “new drugs” for medicine have viewed him as a father of modern medicine. Others have argued that his macrocosmicmicrocosmic philosophy and use of “like cures like” drugs make him the forerunner of both homeopathy and the holistic medicine of the postmodern era.
Vesalius
Historians usually associate the name of Paracelsus with the diagnosis and treatment of disease. The new anatomy of the sixteenth century, however, was the work of Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564). His study of medicine at Paris involved him in the works of Galen. Especially important to him was a recently discovered text of Galen, On Anatomical Procedures, that led Vesalius to emphasize practical research as the principal avenue for understanding human anatomy. After receiving a doctorate in medicine at the University of Padua in 1536, he accepted a position there as professor of surgery. In 1543, he published his masterpiece, On the Fabric of the Human Body.
This book was based on his Paduan lectures, in which he deviated from traditional practice by personally dissecting a body to illustrate what he was discussing. Vesalius’s anatomical treatise presented a careful examination of the individual organs and general structure of the human body. The book would