He undoubtedly performed many important cures, and was thought to have found the supreme secret of alchemistry.
In the pommel of his sword he was believed to carry a familiar spirit.
So dominant was his reputation that in 1527 he was called to the chair of physic in the University of Basel.

Embroiled in quarrels after his first year he was forced to leave secretly, and again began his wanderings through German cities, working, quarrelling, curing, and dying prematurely at Saltzburg in 1541--one of the most tragic figures in the history of medicine.
(7) Professor Sudhoff: Bibliographia Paracelsica, Berlin, 1894, 1899.
(8) R.Julius Hartmann: Theophrast von Hohenheim, Berlin, 1904; ditto, Franz Strunz, Leipzig, 1903.
(9) Anna M.Stoddart: The Life of Paracelsus, London, John Murray, 1911.
Paracelsus is the Luther of medicine, the very incarnation of the spirit of revolt.

At a period when authority was paramount, and men blindly followed old leaders, when to stray from the beaten track in any field of knowledge was a damnable heresy, he stood out boldly for independent study and the right of private judgment.

After election to the chair at Basel he at once introduced a startling novelty by lecturing in German.
He had caught the new spirit and was ready to burst all bonds both in medicine and in theology.

He must have startled the old teachers and practitioners by his novel methods.