On the contributions of Paracelsus to nephrology

Abstract

One of the most intriguing figures in the history of Renaissance medicine is Paracelsus. He lived through a transitional period of science when Europe, having sloughed most of its medieval sheath and nearly through the first half of Renaissance scholarship, characterized by revival of early classicism, was just beginning to formulate the rudiments of its modern form. Parallel to the changes then occurring in religion with its Reformation, and in the arts with its free Baroque style, science, in general, and medicine, in particular, also were embarking on something new and completely different. This was a decisive turning away from the doctrines of the ancients to the more direct investigative approach that was to define medicine by the end of the sixteenth century. It was a century of great reformers (Luther, Vesalius, Pare, Michelangelo, Erasmus, Copernicus) amongst whom Paracelsus pursued a meteoric rise and came to occupy a distinctive, albeit challenged, position.