Paracelsus

“Paracelsus was first of all a physician, and he regarded his own medical remedies as magical. But that was, in his view, the opposite of superstitious; the doctor systematically concentrated and manipulated the invisible, magical forces and ‘virtues’ of nature. And Paracelsus sought to embed this ‘new medicine within a comprehensive system of (devoutly Christian) natural philosophy, from which the doctor’s art emerged naturally. In this much at least, his aim was no different from that of contemporary science: it all has to fit together” (P. Ball, loc 264).