“The Devil’s Doctor” – Philip Ball

Although this biography of Paracelsus starts as a promising guide to medicine and magic in the late middle ages, finishing it turned out to be almost as painful as one of the crude surgery practices described therein.

Philip Ball, a former editor for Nature, introduces Paracelsus, renegade doctor, occasional skeptic, devoted Christian, dabbler in magic, would-be reformer of medicine, boastful megalomaniac, self-styled theologian and passionate alchemist, as a living paradox. There are dozens of contradicting viewpoints that remain of Paracelsus’ writing, outlining a character increasingly difficult to categorize as either “buffoon or genius”, as Ball points out even in his acknowledgements.

Paracelsus was a traveling medic and surgeon (quite distinct professions in those times) with questionable medical qualifications, who made enemies wherever he went. His religion, according to Ball, “might be best described as reformist in spirit, Catholic by default, and wildly unorthodox in practice.” He was “struggling to do something like science with a miner’s coarse lexicon and the mind of a poet”, never actually making a discovery that is still valid today, yet he single-handedly “started a medical revolution and founded a chemical tradition”. He had views about everything, calling Luther and the Pope’s arguments equivalent to “two whores debating chastity”, likening himself to Jesus and setting out dos and don’ts for young doctors: useful (possessing a “gentle heart and a cheerful spirit”), interesting (“should not be a runaway monk, should not practise self-abuse”) and perplexing (“must not have a red beard”). Most importantly, he tried to save lives, more often failing than not, but nevertheless being better at it than most of his contemporaries. Paracelsus advocated the use of personal experience, local cures (determined by astral influences, unfortunately) and his home-made drugs over the outdated recommendations of Galen.

This is not merely, or perhaps even mainly, a biography. Ball presents an account of Renaissance magic and science that is at times much too detailed and drags on for at least four chapters too many, peppered with relevant Paracelsian facts wherever appropriate. Then again, why not? We have here a person who seems to bind together, by his traveling route and larger-than-life nature, conflicts, wars, kings and the birth of a new religion, so maybe using Paracelsus’ life and journeys like a red thread through Renaissance Europe is a great idea. If only it wasn’t quite such a long thread.