The Devil's Doctor

The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science

One day in 1527, Paracelsus let it be known that he would reveal the greatest secret of medicine to the inhabitants of Basle. The esteemed doctors and academics of the university, dressed in their rich robes and fur hats, gathered to hear his words of wisdom. Secretly they hoped the roving physician and alchemist would make a fool of himself; already they could feel the warm glow of Schadenfreude. When Paracelsus appeared he was dressed, as usual, not in the costly clothes of a respected academic, but "in the plain smock of an artisan, stained and smeared with the residues of the chemistry laboratory". In his hands he bore the great secret - a dish which he held aloft for all the learned company to see. It contained "steaming human excrement". As the outraged audience hurried away in disgust, Paracelsus's words echoed after them:

"If you will not hear the mysteries of putrefactive fermentation, you are unworthy of the name of physicians!"

He did indeed believe that the essential truth of alchemy was expressed in the axiom "decay is the beginning of all birth". Confronting his enemies with "a bowl of shit" carried a less esoteric but equally eloquent message.

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Many of the facts of Paracelsus's extraordinary, protean life are hidden in the fog of legend and myth. Ball does an excellent job of filling in the gaps and recreating this strange and wonderful age, with its wandering wizards like Agrippa von Nettesheim ("the archetypal Renaissance magus") and its magical worldview. Today Paracelsianism is "a kaleidoscopic mixture, sometimes beautiful, sometimes grotesque or terrifying or inchoate, always profoundly human". It is a deeply personal, idiosyncratic vision of life and the universe, a vision that only truly made sense to Paracelsus himself. Ball succeeds in convincing us that, despite his arcane ideas, his vision of the "strangeness and the beauty of the magical universe" remains both inspiring and important. As Paracelsus himself wrote, "it is a divine gift to investigate in the light of Nature".

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also see Thumbing his nose at the piss-gazers