There was clearly a practical side to all of this. The Grosse Wundartzney was a book dealing with specific medical problems as well as the preparation of balms and plasters that were widely heralded -- even among those who rejected Paracelsus' cosmological views. The chapters on the cure of wounds caused by gunshot clearly spoke to a growing problem in sixteenth-century medicine. But Paracelsus was aware of other current problems as well. In his Von der Bergsucht oder Bergkranckheiten drey Bücher (1533-34) he prepared the first book on miners' diseases -- indeed, it was the first book specifically on an occupational disease. And in his discussion of syphilis [Vom Holtz Guaiaco gründlicher heylung (1529) and Von der Französischen kranckheit Drey Bücher (1530)] he criticized current methods of treatment including the popular use of guaiac.
Works on specific medical problems were less inflammatory than concepts that seemed to directly challenge Galenic authority. Among the latter, Paracelsus' repeated use of chemistry and chemical analogies was particularly objectionable to the medical establishment. As an example one may turn to his conviction that each bodily organ acted as an alchemist separating pure from impure. Thus, the stomach separated the nutritional part of foodstuffs from the dross which was eliminated through the intestines. Similarly, other organs had their function in maintaining the health of the body. Illness occurred when the directive force in an organ failed and poisons accumulated. Examples were the tartaric diseases where stony precipitates developed in the kidneys or the bladder or -- as in the case of tuberculosis -- in the lungs.
The essentially localized seats of diseases of the Paracelsians differed from the humoral explanations of the Galenists. Utilizing the ancient concept of the four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow and black bile) which were associated with the elements, the Galenists argued that health derived from a proper balance of these fluids while disease was the result of imbalance. The physician might note an excess of blood from a ruddy complexion, yellow bile through the yellowing associated with jaundice, black bile through diarrhoea, or phlegm from a running nose. Even uroscopy might be employed to diagnose an illness through a sample of urine without examining the actual patient since a humoral excess would be evident in the sample.
The Paracelsian rejection of humoral medicine was clearly a fundamental break with medical tradition. No less so was their method of cure. The Galenists argued that contraries cure. That is, a disease of a certain quality and magnitude would be cured by a medicine of opposed quality and magnitude. The Paracelsians turned rather to folk tradition arguing that like cures like: a poison in the body would be cured by a similar poison. And when the Galenists charged that the Paracelsians were a veritable legion of homicide physicians, the latter replied that their medicines were safe because they had been altered chemically; moreover, careful attention had been paid to dosage.
And yet from the beginning there were those who sought to chart a middle course. Albertus Wimpenaeus of Munich wrote his De concordia Hippocraticorum et Paracelsistarum in 1569 and here he admitted that although he followed Paracelsus in some matters he also followed the ancient authorities. Even more important was the venerable Johannes Guinter of Andernach, who late in life, began to read the Paracelsian texts. In his massive De medicina veteri et noua . . . (1571) Guinter held to much of traditional medical theory, but he hoped to conciliate the warring factions. He wrote that Paracelsus himself was an arrogant man, but Guinter felt that there was much of value in his chemically-prepared remedies. He sought to show the similarities between the Aristotelian elements and the Paracelsian principles and he argued that the macrocosm-microcosm analogy had been employed by some of the ancients as well as Paracelsus. He also suggested that cure by similitude was not so different from that by contrariety.
The works of Severinus, Erastus, Wimpenaeus and Guinter give some idea of the range of opinion that had developed by the early 1570s. The tone of the debate became far more bitter in the coming decades. By 1612 John Cotta expressed the views of many when he wrote that "the innumerable dissentions amongst the learned concerning the Arabicke and Chymicke remedies at this day infinitely, with opposite and contradictorie writings, and invectives, burthen the whole-world." Although there was some debate over the more mystical views of the later Paracelsians, the most inflammatory point was the use of chemistry in medicine.
The English reaction to the new chemical medicine was closely related to the French scene. As in France, the first English references to Paracelsus appear in the 1560s. In this case we find that the authors had lived in exile in Switzerland during the harsh reign of the Roman Catholic Queen, Mary. But if the London College of Physicians was initially hostile to the chemists, this attitude gradually faded. By the mid-eighties the Fellows of the College planned an official pharmacopoeia that was to include a section on chemically-prepared medicines. Thomas Moffett who had taken his M.D. at Basel, and was a friend of Peter Severinus, was placed in charge of this section since he had already written a defence of chemical medicines (De Jure et Praestantia Chemicorum Medicamentorum, 1584). Although the project was abandoned at that time there is evidence of an increasing interest in the value of chemistry. R. Bostocke wrote an apology for the entire Paracelsian system in 1585 and reference to specific Paracelsian preparations appear in the works of a number of late Elizabethan surgeons.
After the turn of the century, the medical faculty of Paris went on the offensive once more, this time against such defenders of chemical medicine as Joseph Duchesne (Quercetanus) and Theodore Turquet de Mayerne. Turquet ultimately left the country for London where he revived the dormant pharmacopoeia project of the College and pressed for the inclusion of chemically-prepared medicines. The preface to the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis of 1618 -- surely written by Turquet -- states that
