The Complete Works of Paracelsus: the Huser Edition (1589-1591)

Title page of the first volume of the Huser quarto edition (Bavarian State Library).

We all use medicines when we are sick; and chemistry is nowadays very common in

hospitals. If modern society is able to use to this chemical products to cure people, it is thanks to the

science of a man of the sixteenth century: Philip von Hohenheim, better know as Paracelsus (c.

1493-1541). His works of alchemy and natural philosophy allowed him to discover the reason of

some serious diseases and even to cure them, using (al)chemical elements. Most of them were

manuscripts and many disappeared throughout time. But an admirer of Paracelsus, Johannes Huser

(c. 1545-1604), who had gathered autographs and copies of the manuscripts, decided to publish for

the first time the complete works of the master alchemist. In this essay, we will study the place of

the alchemy as a science in the sixteenth century, the life and works of Paracelsus and the Huser

collection of his writings.

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 Mysterious and obscure, alchemy seems to be the perfect center between Aristotelean

science and magic. Depicted as sorcery during the Middle Ages due to its pagan roots and methods

(fortunetelling stones with runes from the Celts, magical or elemental pentagrams from the Greeks,

Arabic symbols, strange alphabets...), it is still consider as an esoteric art, linked to certain sects as

the Cabala. However, alchemy of the Renaissance was a tool for scientific progress; the chemical

transformation of elements comes directly from alchemical transmutation, even if alchemists tried

to turn lead into gold in vain! Indeed, this art is so ambiguous, so changing from serious medical

cures to impossible Elixirs of Life, that it is difficult to know if alchemists are true scientists or a

complete frauds. Well, at least both conclusions are true, but some made important discoveries in

the history of chemistry or medicine.

The alchemical symbol... of alchemy.

Meanwhile alchemists were burnt as heretics on Catholic lands (Pope John XXII had

condemned alchemy in a papal bull of 1317), the art developed well during the sixteenth century in

the Protestant countries, such as the Holy Roman Empire or England. It is well known that the

Protestants tried to erase superstition; if thus, alchemy had something more to teach than strange

creatures linked to an element (the Uroboros, the Salamander of Fire, Phoenix of Gold, the Unicorn

or Flying Deer of Silver, the Green Lion of Vitriol, the Eagle of Air, the Dog of Mercury, etc...): this

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was the beginning of practical alchemy. According to William Eamon, professor at the New Mexico

State University, the turning point began in 1535 with Christian Egenolff’s pamphlet,

Kunstbüchlein (Little Book of Skills), describing the use of alchemy in everyday life, at home or at

work. The demystification of this forbidden art was essential to the democratisation of science at a

time of strong religious beliefs.

Title page of Kunstbüchlein (1535).

At the same period, an atheist German-Swiss alchemist, Auroleus Phillipus Theostratus

Bombastus von Hohenheim, published under the pseudonym of Paracelsus (not enough space for

his full name on the cover, probably!) revolutionary theories. Born at Silhbrüke (Canton of Schwyz)

in 1493, his father, Willem Bombast von Hohenheim, was a famous Teutonic physician, a situation

which influenced the choice of career of the son. Early in his life, the young Philip von Hohenheim

discovered the works of Isaac Hollandus, who thought that better cures could be found thanks to

alchemy. Then, he entered the University of Basle to study the art of transmutation, surgery and

medicine at sixteen. He became the apprentice of Joannes Trithemius (1462-1516), abbot of

Sponheim and instructor of the natural philosopher Cornelius Agrippa. After the death of his

mentor, he started studying metallurgy with the physician Sigismund (or Sigmund) Fugger of

Schwaz (Austria), a member of the wealthy Fugger family, who owned silver and copper mines in

Tirol.

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 Anonymous, The Famous Doctor Paracelsus, 17th c., from an original portrait by Quentin Massys.

Soon accused to be a necromancer, he decided to travel throughout Europe officially to

acquire experience and officiously to fly away from the stake. Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden

and Russia, he went wherever he could find a new theory and new experiments. The Tartars made

him prisoner and brought him to the Grand Cham (Tartars were united to China after Genghis Khan

in the thirteenth century); his scientific knowledge impressed the emperor of China, who sent him to

Constantinople with his son. Araby and Turkey were the two great nations of alchemy, mathematics

and esoteric sciences in the sixteenth century; scientists, dervishes, fortunetellers and healing

sorcerers inspired him both technically and spiritually for his works on cures against leper and other

plagues.

In 1526, Philip von Hohenheim came back to Holy Roman Empire as a professor of physics,

medicine and surgery at the University of Basle, thanks to Erasmus. But not for long, as his lectures

were again depicted as heretic and forced him to exile himself once more. Indeed, he disagreed with

Galen of Pergamum, the Greco-Roman physician of the second century, whose theory of the

cardinal humours of the body (blood, phlegm, yellow and black biles) influenced the medicine from

the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century onwards; he declared that diseases did not come from

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“humoural pathologies”, but from cosmic entities (environment) and toxins in food. His first

medical theories appeared in 1536 in Die große Wundarzney (The Severe Wound Cure), printed in

Ulm by Hans Varnier and in Strasburg by Georg Raben, and Prognostications. He decided to sign

them under the pseudonym of Paracelsus, the man “above Celsus”, both to refer to the Roman

author of De Medicina, the first encyclopedia of medicine, and to show that he wanted to go beyond

the knowledge of Antiquity. However, because he was ahead of his time (and because of his written

prophecies and his obsessive search for the Philosophers’ Stone), most of his other works were

published only after his death in 1541.

Portrait of Philip Theophrast von Hohenheim at the age of forty-seven, woodcut from the Huser quarto edition of 1589
(Bavarian State Library).

The very first collection of medical and scientific essays of Paracelsus was the Huser quarto

edition. Printed in ten volumes in Basle from 1589 to 1591, Johannes Huser (c. 1545-1604) saved

the greatest part of it thanks to copies of manuscripts. He untitled the collection: Theil Der Bücher

und Schrifften, des Edlen, Hochgelehrten und Bewehrten Philosophi unnd Medici, Philipi

Theophrasti Bombast von Hohenheim, Paracelsi genannt (i.e. Part of the Books and Writings, of

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the Noble, Educated and Proven Philosopher and Doctor, Philip Theophrast Bombast von

Hohenheim, called Paracelsus). The editor explained in the table of content at the beginning of

every volume where he had obtained these texts (manuscripts, copies, autographs...). The texts were

written mostly in German and appear in Gothic types, but some extracts or texts in Latin detach

themselves in Roman types. It is not strange to read a paragraph where the type changes from one

word to the following one.

Second page of the table of content of the Fifth Volume of the Huser quarto edition (Bavarian State Library).

Huser excluded the too ambiguous parts about sorcery and prophecies and divided the ten

volumes in two parts: medicine (five volumes of essays and an appendix in 1589) and natural

philosophy (five volumes of essays in 1590-1591). The division of the ten volumes is as such:

– Volume One: drugs and medicines.

– Volume Two: how physics, alchemy, astrology and drugs can cure diseases.

– Volume Three (three books): on spiritual, internal and external strength (live better to

feel better).

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 – Volume Four (eight parts): on diseases and psychic pathologies (their cause, their

cure...).

– Volume Five (six parts): on toxins and muscular pathologies.

– Volume Five (appendix): against the theory of humoural pathology (defense of

Hippocrates’ theories, importance of analysis of urines...).

– Volume Six (three books): on life, death, resurrection, human transmutation (resurrect or

create people with the use of alchemy).

– Volume Seven (two books): on natural components and their use in medicines and the

influence of planets on the human body.

– Volume Eight (nine parts): on the alchemical elements and celestial bodies.

– Volume Nine (seven parts): on alchemical and supernatural creatures.

– Volume Ten (seven parts): on astrology and magical creatures.

Two final volumes about surgical writings were published after Johannes Huser’s death in

1605 and 1618. It is quite astonishing to realise that an essential work of science would have

disappeared and been forgotten without the admiration of an editor. Paracelsus discovered the utility

of chemistry for the composition of new medicines, this was the first step of the evolution of

apothecaries to pharmacists. But all these ideas would have been thrown down to oblivion if it were

not for Huser, who was brave enough to publish controversial works because he knew they were

revolutionary. Philip von Hohenheim is still considered nowadays as the greatest alchemist ever

(sorry, Harry Potter, that is not Nicholas Flamel!) according to the modern scientists and to the new

alchemical sects. Not only did he change the point of view over chemistry, but he made science and

esotericism agree on a point as well! In popular culture, the woman mangaka Hiromu Arakawa

studied Paracelsus to create the character of Hohenheim Elric, a.k.a Hohenheim the Illuminated ( 光

のホヘンヘイム), the father of the heroes of her best-seller manga : FullMetal Alchemist.

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 Bibliography

Primary sources:

Paracelsus (Bombast von Hohenheim), Philip, Theil Der Bücher und Schrifften, des Edlen,
Hochgelehrten und Bewehrten Philosophi unnd Medici, Philipi Theophrasti Bombast von
Hohenheim, Paracelsi genannt (10 volumes). Basle: Johannes Huser, 1589-1591.

Secondary sources:

Apiryon, T., “The Invisible Basilica: Paracelsus” on The Hermetic Library:

Bruce-Mitford, Miranda and Wilkinson, Philip, “L’Alchimie” from Symboles & Signes:
Origines et Interprétations (Signs & Symbols), tr. Christian Vair. Paris: Larousse, 2009. pp. 210-
211.

Cockren, A., “Paracelsus: Alchemical Genius of the Middle Ages” on The Alchemy Lab:
http://www.alchemylab.com/paracelsus.htm (access on April 29th, 2013).

Eamon, William, “Practical Alchemy in the Renaissance” on William Eamon Website:

Gantenbein, Urs Leo, “The Paracelsus Project” on The University of Zurich Website:
http://www.paracelsus.uzh.ch/index.html (access on April 29th, 2013).

Senfelder, Leopold, “Theophrastus Paracelsus” from The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 11. New
York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11468a.htm (access on April 29th, 2013).

Shuttleworth, Martyn, “Renaissance Alchemy” on Explorable: