FROM PARACELSUS TO HARVEY PARACELSUS In the year 1526 there appeared a new lecturer on the platform at the University at Basel--a small, beardless, effeminate-looking person--who had already inflamed all Christendom with his peculiar philosophy, his revolutionary methods of treating diseases, and his unparalleled success in curing them.

A man who was to be remembered in after-time by some as the father of modern chemistry and the founder of modern medicine; by others as madman, charlatan, impostor; and by still others as a combination of all these.

This soft-cheeked, effeminate, woman-hating man, whose very sex has been questioned, was Theophrastus von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus (1493-1541).
To appreciate his work, something must be known of the life of the man.
He was born near Maria-Einsiedeln, in Switzerland, the son of a poor physician of the place.

He began the study of medicine under the instruction of his father, and later on came under the instruction of several learned churchmen.

At the age of sixteen he entered the University of Basel, but, soon becoming disgusted with the philosophical teachings of the time, he quitted the scholarly world of dogmas and theories and went to live among the miners in the Tyrol, in order that he might study nature and men at first hand.