Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic and Mission at the End of Time (review)

Distinguished medical historian Charles Webster, perhaps best known for The Great Instauration (London: Duckworth, 1975) and From Paracelsus to Newton (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), has produced a scholarly, balanced, and digestible study of the early-sixteenth-century German physician Theophrastus von Hohenheim. It arrived just as DeGruyter published Volume I of eight of the Neue Paracelsus-Edition (Theological Writings; New York, 2008–) and Brill released Andrew Week’s Paracelsus: Essential Theoretical Writings (German with English translations; Boston, 2008). It follows science writer Philip Ball’s The Devil’s Doctor (New York: Farar, Strauss, Giroux, 2006), which is a chronological, very readable, and purely derivative of earlier scholarship. As an introduction to Paracelsus, Ball’s popularizing work is the better bet, as Webster assumes one knows Paracelsus, at least in outline, and is familiar with his historical background. Early on he sketches Paracelsus’ life in a mere eleven pages. The chapters that follow are thematic rather than biographical, placing his ideas, actions, and writings into their appropriate contexts. This allows for the development of well-honed topics of interest to Webster without the interference of the overarching life story.

Chapter 2 lays out the still-emerging world of books and printing in the Empire. Webster weaves discussions of humanist, medical, and occultist works and then foregrounds Paracelsus’ own experiences with publishing. Since little in fact found its way to the press during Paracelsus’ lifetime, Webster outlines the corpus, while discussing works that influenced him and the reputation he gained through his publications. Importantly, Paracelsus usually penned short, popularizing tracts and pamphlets in German rather than Latin. In his next chapter Webster captures the sense of rebellion or dissent that permeates so much of Paracelsus’ output. Theophrastus came of age during the early Reformation, and lived in its centers, such as Strasbourg and Zürich. He shared the Reformers’ hatred of institutionalized Catholicism and their emphasis on individual spiritual experience centered on Scriptural reading. In an importantly analogous manner he rebelled against the humanistic and scholastic medical paradigms of the day, gravitating toward an iatrochemical model of biology, pathology, and healing. For Paracelsus his reformation of medicine paralleled the Church’s Reformation, and even the societal revolution seemingly promised by the German Peasants’ Revolt of 1525.

Ever the independent thinker, Paracelsus developed an essentially unique religious position marked by elements of contemporary Anabaptism and Spiritualism. Webster deftly notes the appropriate parallels and sources, and lays out the physician’s eschatological prophecies. Reform and purification—a process also linked to alchemy—would precede the End Time. Paracelsus personally felt the force of the Gospel’s Great Commission: his bodily healing and reform of bodily healing were the natural side of the spiritual healing and reform of the true, supernatural Church. The materialism and greed of church leaders, political leaders, and physicians alike condemned them all in his eyes, and confirmed their very falseness. Like the pacific Anabaptists, Paracelsus expected misunderstanding, opposition, and even persecution: his very enemies bore witness to his mission. His peripatetic lifestyle resembled that of the “itinerant preacher” or even pilgrim more than that of the mainstream physician. As critic of the medical establishment, Paracelsus took advantage of the natural contentiousness of the competing schools to undermine their claims to monopolies of competence and establish his own well-known model as a viable competitor. He would lead where the false leaders would not and heal where the false healers could not.

This brief but developed and compelling portrait of the physician as reformer is Webster’s great contribution. He has synthesized the German scholarship of the past half-century and has added conclusions based upon his own careful research into such areas as humanistic medicine and early Radical theology. His judgments are well reasoned and his critiques of previous scholarship fair and constructive. He admits “[t]he new wave of Paracelsus research is fully alert to the significance of the religious dimension,” and that...