A person curious about Paracelsus and interested in getting the straight story on the large and legendary character that he is may go to straight to the work of Anna M Stoddart. Of the many books and resources I have read to discern the real from the rot regarding Paracelsus, I find this one near top of the list for getting the overall presentation in an easy to read approachable style. Great for schoolers and adaptable to many age and interest levels. But then move on because the entire list of books are valuable and each book insightful. See the SIDE NOTES for books, links and list.
Anna, for over twenty years, studied and mulled over the life of Paracelsus. Finally she completed her own book and then died just after the final pages were submitted to publish. Some say it was just hours after. In her own words she does convey the sense of importance she had come to feel about writing her book .
"Work of other kinds hindered this undertaking until the early spring of 1910, when I was set free to carry out a project which after years of pondering had assumed the character of an imperative and sacred duty."
In the preface of her book she tells of those people who thoroughly researched and understood Paracelsus, those whose ranks and company she had joined. It is these people that are discussed in this article.
First there was Robert Browning, an English poet, who wrote of Paracelsus about 70 years before Anna.
"In 1833, at the age of twenty-one, Robert Browning wrote his “Paracelsus,” a poem which has to this day held its own as perhaps the most penetrating of his [Browning's] sympathetic revelations."
More detail on Browning's work in the side notes.
Sometime in the 1880's, about 25 years before Anna's own work began, "students at Leipzig, Berlin, Vienna, and Salzburg began to examine the neglected traces of Hohenheim’s [Paracelsus] career and to estimate its importance to science. These are the students who unravelled the tangled web of misrepresentation and rescued its golden thread of truth from the meshes", as Anna tells us.
Later came the work of Karl Sudhoff (1853-1938) who possibly was in contact or collaboration with the students. He followed up the student research by focusing on and establishing the authenticity of Paracelsus' work.
"his masterly inquiry into the accumulated writings attributed to Paracelsus and published its results in the two volumes of his “Attempt at a Critical Estimate of the Authenticity of the Paracelsian Writings,” the first of which appeared at Berlin in 1894."
His work is known today as the Paracelsus Project . see the side notes
According to Karl Sudhoff Theophrastus may have taken the name Paracelsus to refer to himself as one exceeding the Roman physician Celsus, others say it was his father who gave him this title when he was young, or it could have been simply a Latinization of the family name "Hohenheim", meaning -the one living at a high place. In any case it is useful to know there are traces of a Roman physician who lived in the period following Cicero and during the Augustan period. Celsus lived sometime close to 43 BC and into the first century AD. This would have been 1500 years before Paracelsus' time. There existed actual remains of work by Celsus, authenticated works on medical knowledge during this Roman period. More on the work of Sidhoff and on Celsus can be found in the side notes to this article.
Dr. Carl Aberle published a German book with information on his research into the life and lingering fragments of Paracelsus. I could not discover an English transaltion of his book but Anna Stoddart tells us,
"Dr. Carl Aberle investigated the portraits of all kinds, plastic and graphic, oil paintings, sketches, copper-plate engravings and woodcuts, and systematised them ; and in pursuance of this laborious quest made almost as many pilgrimages as Paracelsus had made and discovered from legendary and oral tradition a mass of subsidiary but important biographical data. He continued too, the surgical examinations of Hohenheim’s skull and bones which were begun in Salzburg by his father and published their testimony in his valuable book “Monument, Skull, and Portraiture of Theophrastus Paracelsus,” at Salzburg, in 1891. "
Her next reference to Dr. Julius Hartmann was somewhat confusing. She does not offer as many details on this Hartmann and I could not locate his name or work. There seem to be various possible figures named Hartmann. Dr. Franz Hartmann published a work in London in 1887, seven years before Sudhoff's 1894 publication. Later this work was published in Germany after Anna's own book published. Franz Hartmann wrote many books and was a German doctor of medicine as was his own father. Karl Hartmann.
I finally located one book by R. Julius Hartmann, a German publication from 1904 titled Die Basler Professur des Theophrast von Hohenheim Inauguraldissertation, Tubingen which translates to The Basel Professorship of Theophrastus of Hohenheim -Inaugural Dissertation, Tübingen. R. Julius Hartmann does not appear to be a doctor. It is possible his work was his own dissertation to obtain a doctoral degree. Anna says,
"Dr. Julius Hartmann made a close study of those books which Dr. Sudhoff recognised as authentic writings of Hohenheim and collected from them in chronological order all references to his active life, his journeys and personal experiences, compiling what resembles an autobiography, which is a sine qua non to all students of his effort to reform medical science."
I believe she was refering to this R. Julius Hartmann and his work while a student. He had likely achieved his doctorate by 1911 when Anna Stoddart was writing. Further information on all of these Hartmanns is in the side notes.
Franz and Carl Strunz-
"Professors Franz Strunz at Leipzig and Carl Strunz at Vienna make the amazing genius of this persecuted man the subject of lectures to their students, and the former is editing an edition of his [Paracelsus'] works in their original German with notes of explanation, and already both the “Paragranum” and the “Paramirum” have appeared. These men are pioneers in Paracelsian research and their work is attracting many students. "
I have only found these books in German but there is a link in the side notes to a website that offers english translation.
Anna tells us that for twenty years she had meditated the possibility of wrting the life of Paracelsus herself. She was a writer of other books about people of her own time. She cleally followed the research and expanding awareness of the character of Paracelsus.
"In 1840 Ambroise Pare’s gifted biographer, Dr. Maignan, admitted and emphasised Hohenheim’s [Paracelsus'] brilliant services to science."
But then in 1895 a book on the history of medicine was published and included what she believed to be slander against the true work and character of Paracelsus. It was then that she made the committment to write his story herself, and include all the research that had been accomplished and was still being overlooked.
She piled up her own research in the process,
"To the Librarians of the Royal College of Physicians, and of the Advocates’ Library in Edinburgh, and to those of other libraries at home and abroad, in which I became acquainted with the earliest editions of Hohenheim’s works, I am indebted for constant courtesy and help."
Thank you Anna, for your work.
Details, links to books and other resources are in the side notes for this article.
PARACELSUS SCHOOLERS PEOPLE OLD BOOKS SIDE NOTES
