1493

Birth of physician and alchemist Paracelsus in Swiss village of Einsiedeln, who launched a one-man campaign against Galen and ancient Greek view of human anatomy based on Galen’s dissections of animals; refused to lecture in Latin, only in colloquial German (Rutkow, 55-56). One of the treatises he planned to publish near end of his life, Septem defensiones (Seven Defenses), his defense of his ideas against his detractors, was published only in 1955 when Carinthia published the books as Die Karntner Schriften (The Carthusian Writings). In it he argued that ancient Greek medicine was fine for ancient ailments, but not those of the present (B. Moran, 13, 28).