Editing Paracelsus (section)

== Chemistry and alchemy ==
=== Chemistry in medicine ===
Paracelsus was one of the first medical professors to recognize that physicians required a solid academic knowledge in the natural sciences, especially [[chemistry]]. Paracelsus pioneered the use of chemicals and minerals in [[medicine]].

=== Zinc ===
He was probably the first to give the [[Chemical element|element]] ''[[zinc]]'' (''zincum'') its modern name,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Habashi |first=Fathi |url=http://www.zinc.org/general/ZP-Discovering_the_8th_Metal1.pdf |title=Discovering the 8th metal |publisher=International Zinc Association |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150606210821/http://www.zinc.org/general/ZP-Discovering_the_8th_Metal1.pdf |archive-date=6 June 2015 |url-status=dead}}.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |author=Hefner Alan |title=Paracelsus |url=http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/p/paracelsus.html |access-date=28 October 2005 |archive-date=21 December 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051221183615/http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/p/paracelsus.html |url-status=live }}</ref> in about 1526, likely based on the sharp pointed appearance of its crystals after smelting (''zinke'' translating to "pointed" in German). Paracelsus invented chemical therapy, chemical urinalysis, and suggested a biochemical theory of digestion.<ref name=":2" /> Paracelsus used chemistry and chemical analogies in his teachings to medical students and to the medical establishment, many of whom found them objectionable.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal |last=Borzelleca |first=Joseph F. |date=1 January 2000 |title=Paracelsus: Herald of Modern Toxicology |journal=Toxicological Sciences |volume=53 |issue=1 |pages=2–4 |doi=10.1093/toxsci/53.1.2 |issn=1096-6080 |pmid=10653514 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

=== Hydrogen ===
Paracelsus in the beginning of the sixteenth century had unknowingly observed [[hydrogen]] as he noted that in reaction when [[acids]] attack [[metals]], gas was a [[by-product]].<ref name="Rigden2003">{{cite book |author=John S. Rigden |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FhFxn_lUvz0C |title=Hydrogen: The Essential Element |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-674-01252-3 |page=10}}</ref> Later, [[Théodore de Mayerne]] repeated Paracelsus's experiment in 1650 and found that the gas was flammable. However, neither Paracelsus nor de Mayerne proposed that hydrogen could be a new element.<ref>{{cite web |author=Doug Stewart |title=Discovery of Hydrogen |url=http://www.chemicool.com/elements/hydrogen.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141007075447/http://www.chemicool.com/elements/hydrogen.html |archive-date=7 October 2014 |access-date=20 November 2014 |publisher=Chemicool}}</ref>

=== Elements ===
{{See also|Chemical element#History}}

==== Classical elements ====
Paracelsus largely rejected the philosophies of [[Aristotle]] and [[Galen]], as well as the [[Humorism|theory of humours]]. Although he did accept the concept of [[the four elements]]—water, air, fire, and earth; he saw them as a foundation for other properties on which to build.<ref name="Pagel, Walter 1958">Pagel, Walter. ''Paracelsus; an Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance''. Basel: Karger, 1958. Print.</ref> In a posthumously published book entitled, ''[[A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits]]'', Paracelsus also described four [[elemental]] beings, each corresponding to one of the [[Classical elements|four elements]]: [[Salamanders in folklore and legend|Salamanders]], which correspond to fire; [[Gnomes]], corresponding to earth; [[Undines]], corresponding to water; and [[Sylphs]], corresponding to air.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Silver |first=Carole B. |title=Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1999 |isbn=0-19-512199-6 |pages=38}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Paracelsus |title=''Four Treatises of Theophrastus Von Hohenheim Called Paracelsus'' |publisher=JHU Press |year=1996 |pages=222}}</ref>

==== Elements, heaven and Earth ====
Paracelsus often viewed fire as the [[Firmament]] that sat between air and water in the heavens. Paracelsus often uses an egg to help describe the elements. In his early model, he claimed that air surrounded the world like an egg shell. The egg white below the shell is like fire because it has a type of chaos to it that allows it to hold up earth and water. The earth and water make up a globe which, in his egg analogy, is the yolk. In ''De Meteoris'', Paracelsus claims the firmament is the heavens.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kahn |first=Didier |title=''Unifying Heaven and Earth: Essays in the History of Early Modern Cosmology'' |publisher=Universitat de Barcelona |year=2016}}</ref>

==== ''Tria prima''<!-- [[tria prima]] redirects to this section: when changing the title of the section header, please also change the redirect target -->====
[[File:Vitriol.png|alt=Seventeenth century alchemical emblem showing the four Classical elements in the corners of the image, alongside the tria prima on the central triangle|thumb|The four classical elements (in the corners) with the ''tria prima'' (on the points of the big triangle)]]
From his study of the elements, Paracelsus adopted the idea of tripartite alternatives to explain the nature of medicines, which he thought to be composed of the '''{{lang|la|tria prima}}''' ('three primes' or [[principle (chemistry)|principles]]): a combustible element (sulphur), a fluid and changeable element (mercury), and a solid, permanent element (salt). The first mention of the mercury-sulphur-salt model was in the ''Opus paramirum'' dating to about 1530.<ref name="Webster, Charles 2008">Webster, Charles. Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic and Mission at the End of Time. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008. Print.</ref> Paracelsus believed that the principles sulphur, mercury, and salt contained the poisons contributing to all diseases.<ref name="Pagel, Walter 1958" /> He saw each disease as having three separate cures depending on how it was afflicted, either being caused by the poisoning of sulphur, mercury, or salt. Paracelsus drew the importance of sulphur, salt, and mercury from medieval alchemy, where they all occupied a prominent place. He demonstrated his theory by burning a piece of wood. The fire was the work of sulphur, the smoke was mercury, and the residual ash was salt.<ref name="Webster, Charles 2008" /> Paracelsus also believed that mercury, sulphur, and salt provided a good explanation for the nature of medicine because each of these properties existed in many physical forms. The ''tria prima'' also defined the human identity. Salt represented the body; mercury represented the spirit (imagination, moral judgment, and the higher mental faculties); sulphur represented the soul (the emotions and desires). By understanding the chemical nature of the ''tria prima'', a physician could discover the means of curing disease. With every disease, the symptoms depended on which of the three principles caused the ailment.<ref name="Webster, Charles 2008" /> Paracelsus theorized that materials which are poisonous in large doses may be curative in small doses; he demonstrated this with the examples of magnetism and static electricity, wherein a small magnet can attract much larger pieces of metal.<ref name="Webster, Charles 2008" />

===== ''Tria prima'' in ''The Sceptical Chymist'' =====
[[File:Portret van Robert Boyle, RP-P-OB-4578 (cropped).jpg|thumb|192x192px|Robert Boyle]]
[[File:Sceptical chymist 1661 Boyle Title page AQ18 (3).jpg|thumb|225x225px|Title page of ''The Sceptical Chymist'']]
Even though Paracelsus accepted the four classical elements, in [[Robert Boyle|Robert Boyle's]] ''[[The Sceptical Chymist]],'' published in 1661 in the form of a dialogue between friends, ''Themistius,'' the [[Aristotelianism|Aristotelian]] of the party, speaks of the three principles as though they were meant to replace, rather than complement, the classical elements and compares Paracelsus' theory of the elements unfavourably with that of Aristotle:

{{Blockquote|text=This Doctrine is very different from the whimseys of ''Chymists'' ... whose ''Hypotheses'' ... often fram’d in one week, are perhaps thought fit to be laughed at the next; and being built perchance but upon two or three Experiments are destroyed by a third or fourth, whereas the doctrine of the four Elements was fram’d by ''Aristotle'' after he had ... considered those Theories of former Philosophers, which are now with great applause revived... And had so judiciously detected ... the ... defects of former ''Hypotheses'' concerning the Elements, that his Doctrine ... has been ever since deservedly embraced by the letter’d part of Mankind: All the Philosophers that preceded him having in their several ages contributed to the compleatness of this Doctrine... Nor has an ''Hypothesis'' so ... maturely established been called in Question till in the last Century ''Paracelsus'' and some ... Empiricks, rather then ... Philosophers ... began to rail at the Peripatetick Doctrine ... and to tell the credulous World, that they could see but three Ingredients in mixt Bodies ... instead of Earth, and Fire, and Vapour, Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury; to which they gave the canting title of Hypostatical Principles: but when they came to describe them ...’tis almost ... impossible for any sober Man to find their meaning.{{Sfn|Boyle|1661|p=23-24}}}}

Boyle—speaking through other characters—rejected both Paracelsus' three principles (sulfur, mercury, and salt), and the “Aristotelian” elements (earth, water, air, and fire), or any system with a pre-determined number of elements. In fact, Boyle's arguments were mainly directed against Paracelsus’ theory as being the one more in line with experience, so that arguments against it should be at least as valid against the Aristotelian view.

{{Blockquote|text=Much of what I am to deliver ... may be indifferently apply’d to the four Peripatetick Elements, and the three Chymical Principles ... the Chymical ''Hypothesis'' seeming to be much more countenanc’d by Experience then the other, it will be expedient to insist chiefly upon the disproving of that; especially since most of the Arguments that are imploy’d against it, may, by a little variation, be made ... at least as strongly against the less plausible, ''Aristotelian'' Doctrine.{{Sfn|Boyle|1661|p=36}}}}