Paracelsus, born Theophrastus von Hohenheim, was a Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance.
1538 portrait by Augustin Hirschvogel
The Louvre copy of the lost portrait by Quentin Matsys, source of the iconographic tradition of "fat" Paracelsus
The University of Basel, where Paracelsus started working as a professor in 1527
Monument to Paracelsus in Beratzhausen, Bavaria
Alchemy is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first attested in a number of pseudepigraphical texts written in Greco-Roman Egypt during the first few centuries AD.
Depiction of an Ouroboros from the alchemical treatise Aurora consurgens (15th century), Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Switzerland
Ambix, cucurbit and retort of Zosimos, from Marcelin Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (3 vol., Paris, 1887–1888)
15th-century artistic impression of Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber), Codici Ashburnhamiani 1166, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence
"An illuminated page from a book on alchemical processes and receipts", ca. 15th century
