The Devil's Doctor : Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New. 2006. Hardcover. 0374229791 .*** FREE UPGRADE to Courier/Priority Shipping Upon Request *** – – *** IN STOCK AND IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE FOR SHIPMENT - Flawless copy, pristine - DESCRIPTION: Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, who called himself Paracelsus, stands at the cusp of medieval and modern times. A contemporary of Luther, an enemy of the medical establishment, a scourge of the universities, an alchemist, an army surgeon, and a radical theologian, he attracted myths even before he died. His fantastic journeys across Europe and beyond were said to be made on a magical white horse, and he was rumored to carry the elixir of life in the pommel of his great broadsword. His name was linked with Faust, who bargained with the devil. Who was the man behind these stories? Some have accused him of being a charlatan, a windbag who filled his books with wild speculations and invented words. Others claim him as the father of modern medicine. Philip Ball exposes a more complex truth in The Devil's Doctor—one that emerges only by entering into Paracelsus's time. He explores the intellectual, political, and religious undercurrents of the sixteenth century and looks at how doctors really practiced, at how people traveled, and at how wars were fought. For Paracelsus was a product of an age of change and strife, of renaissance and reformation. And yet by uniting the diverse disciplines of medicine, biology, and alchemy, he assisted, almost in spite of himself, in the birth of science and the emergence of the age of rationalism. * * -- * * TOC: Introduction : fool's quest : a Faustian legacy -- Black Madonna : a country -- Metal makers : learning the arts -- The universal scholar : a Renaissance education -- The staff and the snake : healing in the Renaissance -- Intellectual vagabonds : walking the pages of the book of nature -- New religion : the trials of reformation -- Revolution under the sign of the shoe : sedition in Salzburg -- Transmutation at Ingolstadt : making gold -- Elixir and quintessence : a chemical medicine -- Bitter medicine : Paracelsus among the humanists -- with a bonus offer--; ; 448 pages .