Oeuvres complètes de Philippe Aureolus Theophraste Bombast de Hohenheim, dit Paracelse

Paracelsus, doctor, chemist, lecturer, and reformer, was one of the most remarkable figues in medicine. Called by some "the pioneer of modern chemists," by others "uncouth, boorish, vain, ignorant, and pretentious," he was, however, the first to write on miner's disease, to establish the relationship between cretenism and endemic goitre, to note the geographic difference in disease, and to lecture in the vernacular rather than in Latin. He disbelieved in the use of boiling oil for the purification of gunshot wounds. Osler says that Paracelsus was "the Luther of medicine," for when authority was paramount, he stood out for independent study. -- H.W. Orr