PROLOGUE

LIFTING THE LID

PARACELSUS’S REPUTATION HAD SPREAD before him. His grand inaugural lecture in 1526 as professor of medicine at the University of Basel, the oldest and most prestigious in Switzerland, had attracted a large crowd. The front rows of the hall were filled with the city worthies in their robes of office; alongside them were the university professors bedecked in their black gowns with coloured sashes; and amongst them were the city’s fashionably attired leading physicians. Ordinary townsfolk, the merely curious, and many students were crammed into the back rows, squatting in the aisles, or spilling out through the open door into the main square.

Enter Paracelsus in his ragged leather alchemist’s apron, bearing aloft a covered platter. He began his lecture by announcing to the assembled company that he would now reveal to them the greatest secret of medical science. Whereupon, with a flourish, he lifted the lid from the platter. To reveal a pile of fresh human excrement.

The first rows of the audience, close enough for their nostrils to detect the odour of what lay before them, rose to their feet. Muttering angrily amongst themselves, they began making their way back up the aisles, their scowling faces forcing a path through the squatting students cluttering the exit.

Amidst the rising hubbub, Paracelsus’s voice could be heard calling out after them: ‘If you will not hear the mysteries of putrefaction, you are unworthy of the name of physicians.’ Paracelsus had long understood that fermentation was the most important chemical process to take place in the laboratory of the human body. Here lay the secret of life itself: how the human body functioned, gaining its nourishment and expelling extraneous, often toxic, matter. The students and other townsfolk who had come along for the show were not disappointed, and began applauding and cheering him to the rafters.

When order was finally restored, with intent students now occupying the front seats of the auditorium, Paracelsus resumed his lecture. He informed his audience that these were times of drastic change. That for the good of humanity our view of ourselves and our place in the world had to be transformed.* Elixirs of life, propitious alignments of the signs of the zodiac, and fallacious systems which prescribed a holistic internal balance of ‘humours’ as the key to human health were all now outmoded – mere things of the past. The world did not ultimately consist of earth, air, fire and water; and the time was over when the physician’s task was to relate these elements to the four humours, whose balance was said to control our health – namely, black bile (earth), blood (air), yellow bile (fire) and phlegm (water). The earth contained all manner of chemicals and plants, just as the body suffered from all manner of ailments and diseases. The task of the physician was to learn which of these chemicals and plants were appropriate for curing particular infirmities. Likewise, it was necessary to learn through experience the required dosages necessary to eliminate such illnesses. Suitably diluted quantities, regularly administered, might cure the patient; excessive doses were liable to be lethal. Here, Paracelsus was laying the foundations of modern pharmacology.

Thus spoke the man whom many regard as the father of modern medicine. Others, by contrast, continue to regard him as no more than a bombastic self-advertising quack. The Renaissance was in many ways a schizophrenic era. A number of its finest pioneering thinkers would frequently retain incongruous remn