Practising alchemy: the transmutation of evidence into best health care.

Alchemy was the synthesis or transmutation of all elements in perfect balance to obtain the philosopher's stone, the key to health. Just as alchemists sought this, so health practitioners always seek the best possible practice for optimal health outcomes for our patients. Best practice requires full knowledge--a little information can be dangerous. We need to serve our apprenticeship before we master our profession. Our profession is about improving health care. While the journey may start at medical school, the learning never ceases. It is not only about practising medicine, it is about the development of the practitioner. Professional practice requires systematic thinking combined with capacity to deal morally and creatively in areas of complexity and uncertainty appropriate to a specific context. It requires exemplary communication skills to interact with patients to facilitate collaborative decision making resulting in best practice. The synthesis of scientific and contextual evidence is a concept which applies to all disciplines where theoretical knowledge needs to be transferred to action to inform best practice. Decisions need to be made which take into account a complex array of factors, such as social and legal issues and resource constraints. Therefore, journey towards best practice involves transmutation of these three elements: scientific knowledge, the context in which it is applied and phronesis, the practical wisdom of the practitioner. All science has its limitations and we can never know all possible contextual information. Hence, like the philosopher's stone, best practice is a goal to which we aspire but never quite attain.

The Homunculus and the Paracelsian Liber de imaginibus.

As William R. Newman has already shown, the alchemical homunculus described in the pseudo-Paracelsian writing De natura rerum was not the only kind of "homunculus" present in the works of (or attributed to) Paracelsus. Two other important kinds of "homunculi" indeed appeared in other treatises: one in De homunculis et monstris and the other in both Vom langen Leben and the Liber de imaginibus. This article focuses on the latter tract and its relationships with De natura rerum. After discussing the authenticity of the Liber de imaginibus, I will provide a brief analysis of its content and discuss the major topics common to the two treatises: the "signatures of things" and the homunculus. By studying the reception of the latter, I will show how the alchemical conception of the homunculus, as explained in De natura rerum, quickly established itself as the most prominent notion despite the fact that the golem-like version of Vom langen Leben and De imaginibus had nearly as much success at first among Paracelsians.

Paracelsus, a Transmutational Alchemist.

A scholarly consensus has long held that in redefining alchemy, Paracelsus rejected metallic transmutation. I show here, however, that for most of his career Paracelsus believed that it was possible to change one metal into another, and even late in his short life he did not break with that view. Furthermore, in certain places in his works he also represented himself, occasionally directly and more often obliquely, as a practical transmutationist. Because Paracelsus not only acknowledged that metallic transmutations were theoretically possible but also claimed to have carried them out in practice, we must regard him as (among other things) a transmutational alchemist. As such, he had more in common than historians have generally admitted with both his medieval predecessors and his posthumous followers. The Paracelsian alchemists of the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not wrong to situate Paracelsus within the alchemical tradition, nor to connect their own goldmaking interests to his.

Arnaldo Da Villanova medieval physician (1235-1311). A first approach.

Arnaldo de Villanova, was a Catalan Physician, born in Villanova de Grau, a suburb of Valencia - Spain about 1235. He died off the coast of Genoa in 1311 during a sea voyage departing from Messina in Sicily, during a diplomatic mission by Pope Clement V in Avignon on orders by the King of Sicily. He was a so famous and clever scientist of the thirteenth century, to give his name to the Universitary Hospital of Montpellier - France. His interests ranged from theology, to politics, medicine, and anymore alchemy. He was an adviser and physician of Kings of Aragon, like Peter III the Great (1276-1285) and James II the Right (1285-1327), of Robert of Angi (1309-1343) of Naples, and of Popes, like Innocenzo V (1276), Bonifacio VIII (1294-1303), Benedetto XI (1303-1304), Clemente V (1305-1314), and of the King of Sicily Federico II of Aragon (1296-1337). For the Pope Bonifacio VIII, suffering from renal colic due to kidney stones, he prescribed Hydrotherapy with Fiuggi Thermal water, that was specially transported for him from its source to Rome and Anagni, in jars wrapped in coarse carpets or wool fabrics, to better maintain the source temperature. In addition in July of 1301, he also produced an astrological seal (Talisman) made of gold loaded of virtues, obtained exposing the seal to the power of the Sun, in those days in the Leo Constellation. This seal was worn by the Pope in an hernial belt of leather to support the kidney,probably to improve hisnephroptosis. Arnaldo produced this seal according to what was described in the book Picatrix - The goal of the wise of the Arabic astronomer and alchemist "Abu l-Qasim Maslama b.- Ahmad al-Majriti, known with the pseudonym Ghayat al hakim died in Cordova about 1008. Ten years later, after his mysterious death at sea on a Sicilian royal ship, his body was not buried at sea, but was reported in Sicily and buried in the Federician Castle of Montalbano of Elicona at the end of Peloritans Mountains near Milazzo, about 90 km from Messina, where he loved to stay and to write.

[Interpretation of the epitaph on the grave of Paracelsus (1493-1541) in the St. Sebastian cemetery in Salzburg]. / Zur Interpretation der Inschrift auf dem Grabdenkmal des Paracelsus (1493-1541) im St.-Sebastians-Friedhof in Salzburg.

The inscription on Paracelsus' epitaph in the cemetery of Saint Sebastian in Salzburg is critically reviewed with regard to an allusion to Job, Chapter 19.

[Picture of Paracelsus, the physician--and we today]. / Das Arztbild des Paracelsus--und wir heute.

This article features the question whether Paracelsus and his dark, sometimes contradictory doctrine still includes some messages for modern physician. The lonely, pugnacious fighter from Central Switzerland remains today 'confused between favour and hatred from the parties'. Some contradictory examples shall outline controversies lasting for centuries. Subsequently Paracelsus' picture of nature, man and medicine is outlined, particular his meaning of nature and work of a good physician, but also his furious often unjustified overwhelming criticism about those physicians who went astray "in the labyrinthus medicorum". Sheep-physicians and wolf-physicians are confronted mercilessly and in a black and white scheme by this Lutherus medicorum. This likewise strange as well as also fascinating picture of a physician by this man of Hohenheim does not imply a clearly conceived temple inviting for an easy academic stroll. The sketch of a temple, however, serves as a symbol for the paracelsic science of healing: Philosophy, astronomy and alchemy are the three columns for the physician. These three columns are founded on virtue, the ethos of the physician. Religion the love for god, serves as a celestial roof. Finally the author expresses his opinion, that even today 500 years later, a modern, scientifically educated physician may profit from the philosophic and ethic principles of Paracelsus, who himself was a contemporary of a time of change like we are in our days.

[The usages of human blood in late medieval alchemical treatises]. / L'uso del sangue umano in alcuni trattati medico alchemici tardomedievali.

The "Epistula de sanguine humano" attributed to Arnald da Villa Nova envisages the use of distilled human blood for therapeutic purposes. Similar practice, with some substantial variants, can be also found in the traditional usages of ancient magic and popular medicine.

Chemists, physicians, and changing perspectives on the scientific revolution.

Positivism in the history of science and medicine was challenged by Walter Pagel more than fifty years ago. He sought to understand early modern figures such as Harvey, Paracelsus, and van Helmont by looking at all their work, including nonscientific material generally ignored by other scholars. Of special importance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the chemistry found in the writings of Paracelsus and his followers. These "chemical philosophers" offered a new philosophy based on chemistry and chemical analogies that was to replace the works of the ancients. As physicians, they debated first with Galenists and Aristotelians and later with mechanists. The essay argues that these debates were an essential chapter in the development of the Scientific Revolution and important for understanding the Chemical Revolution of the eighteenth century.