Paracelsus

“For Paracelsus, the internal alchemist ([read: the role of DNA] also had the job of separating what was useful from what was not in the body. Since the influence of the greater world, the astra, also contained disease, the internal alchemist needed to separate what was poisonous from what was beneficial to the body. . . So the physician needed to understand the processes by which alchemists worked. He or she needed to know what calcination and sublimation were and needed to understand distillation and fermentation, because these processes were the means by which all chemical natures were completed . . . Knowing these things allowed the physician to come to the aid of the body’s ‘internal alchemist’ . . . The two, the body and the physician, then worked together, the ‘internal alchemist” receiving help from the physician-alchemist, who supplied, by laboratory means, what a specific part of the body required [i.e., by .Making medicine and applying medicines] . . .” (B. Mora, 41).