Unfortunately, however, there are good grounds for doubting that he was particularly influential in reintroducing these medicines.

His chief influence may perhaps be summed up in a single phrase--he overthrew old traditions.
To Paracelsus's endeavors, however, if not to the actual products of his work, is due the credit of setting in motion the chain of thought that developed finally into scientific chemistry.

Nor can the ultimate aim of the modern chemist seek a higher object than that of this sixteenth-century alchemist, who taught that "true alchemy has but one aim and object, to extract the quintessence of things, and to prepare arcana, tinctures, and elixirs which may restore to man the health and soundness he has lost." THE GREAT ANATOMISTS About the beginning of the sixteenth century, while Paracelsus was scoffing at the study of anatomy as useless, and using his influence against it, there had already come upon the scene the first of the great anatomists whose work was to make the century conspicuous in that branch of medicine.
The young anatomist Charles etienne (1503-1564) made one of the first noteworthy discoveries, pointing out for the first time that the spinal cord contains a canal, continuous throughout its length.

He also made other minor discoveries of some importance, but his researches were completely overshadowed and obscured by the work of a young Fleming who came upon the scene a few years later, and who shone with such brilliancy in the medical world that he obscured completely the work of his contemporary until many years later.

This young physician, who was destined to lead such an eventful career and meet such an untimely end as a martyr to science, was Andrew Vesalius (1514-1564), who is called the "greatest of anatomists." At the time he came into the field medicine was struggling against the dominating Galenic teachings and the theories of Paracelsus, but perhaps most of all against the superstitions of the time.