Esoteric Coffeehouse

There is hardly a more controversional figure in the history of ideas than Paracelsus, by his real name Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim (1493-1541). He was many things to many people: a hero to some, a quack to other, a devil’s doctor, a German nationalist or a drunkard. Perhaps he was all these things, because, by comparison to most other historical figures, he was impossible to frame. In fact, Paracelsus created a world of his own and a mythology that has never ceased to fascinate since his premature death at 47.

Inevitably, any scholarly analysis of Paracelsus is bound to reduce something from his larger-than-life self. Scholars simply do not have the tools to tackle his complexity. The same is the situation of his works. He wrote a wondrous amount, and another wondrous amount was added unto him by his faithful followers. Like a religious figure, he created a veritable ‘tradition’ of writings that were attributed to him. This huge compendium is still awaiting a contemporary analysis, despite efforts in this direction (notably Kurt Goldammer).

Paracelsus was a religious figure of sorts; many people called him ‘Lutherus Medicorum’, the Luther of physicians. He didn’t like it; even though he lived during the turmoil of Luther’s Reform, he remained a faithful, if unorthodox Catholic. Instead, he proposed his own version of the world, a peculiar mixture of natural philosophy, alchemy, magic and Christianity. He was in fact the quintessential representative of the Renaissance; a man convinced of his mission of reforming people’s views of the world and of Christianity. He believed there was no inherent contradiction between the analysis of the natural world (we now call this ‘science’) and religion; in fact, Christianity was the very basis of this analysis.

(more…)

Homeopathy is the brainchild of Samuel Hahnemann, a German doctor practicing at the beginning of the 19th century. As a young physician, Hahnemann became discontented with the mainstream medicine practiced during his era, which often employed harsh and doubtful measures such as bloodletting, purging, blistering and excessive doses (1). His own experience and observation led him to propose a radically new medicine, homeopathy, which could be translated as “the cure is like to the disease”. Homeopathy is based on a few pillar principles developed by Hahnemann, which I will attempt to summarise below:

1. The law of “similars”. This law, which is rightfully considered as the basic tenet of homeopathy, had been the mainstay of several ‘dissident’ physicians such as Hippocrates, Paracelsus or Stahl. The law maintains that cure should be similar, rather than opposed to disease. In other words, patients should take medicine that is apparently ‘stimulating’ the illness. This may sound rather absurd in our day-and-age, when it is ‘self-understood’ that the medicine should be contradictory to the disease: thus, when we have an infection we take antibiotics to ‘reduce’ or ‘eliminate’ it. Who would even consider taking something that would increase the infection? Yet some famous physicians, including Hahnemann, thought that a contrary medicine only quashes the symptoms, without addressing the real problem. The infection may be reduced or eliminated, but the body’s disease would only find some other outlet to express itself. That is because, in Hahnemann’s views, disease goes deeper than what we normally think as illness. Disease is a spiritual entity, rather than a physical one (2).

2. Theory of the vital force (“vitalism”). Homeopathy belongs to a long lineage of scientists or philosophers that believed that, behind the apparent materiality of the universe lay a spiritual force that organized matter (3). Proponents of this theory include Aristotle, Hippocrates, Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Stahl, Bergson, Driesch and others (4, 5). Hahnemann subscribed to this view, maintaining that the body was animated by a spiritual force he called “dynamis”, which was responsible for maintaining and regulating the body (6). Far before the ideas of homeostasis and immunity were introduced into medicine, he believed that the body had the capacity of self-regulating itself. However, he also considered that, when disease takes over, the body is no longer able to protect itself and the physician must then intervene.

(more…)