#paracelsus — Public Fediverse posts

St. Vincent de Paul

Author’s Note: This post contains mentions of slavery. If this triggers you, you may go to the next post. We understand.

Vincent de Paul (April 24, 1581-September 27, 1660; 79 years old at the time of his passing) was a French Catholic priest who dedicated himself to serving the poor & is best known for founding the Congregation of the Mission & Daughters of Charity.

After being ordained a priest in 1600, de Paul was kidnapped/adult-napped (he was 19 years old at the time) & enslaved for 2 years in Tunis (This was a semi-autonomous territory of the Ottoman Empire; it’s in modern-day Tunisia). He returned to Europe after escaping in 1607 (26 years old at the time).

He then served as a parish priest & in the French royal court before dedicating himself to the poor, founding the Ladies of Charity in 1617 (36 years old at the time). In 1622, de Paul was appointed as chaplain to the galley slaves in Paris.

De Paul founded the Congregation of the Mission (a.k.a. the Vincentians or Lazarists) in 1625 (44 years old). Having vowed poverty, chastity, obedience, & stability, they were to devote themselves entirely to people in smaller towns/villages.

He was a pioneer in seminary education & also founded the Daughters of Charity in 1633 (52 years old). He’s the namesake of the Vincentian Family of organizations, which includes the religious order he founded, among others.

He was renowned for his compassion, humility, & generosity. He was canonized in 1737. He was venerated as a saint in both the Catholic Church & the Anglican Communion.

Vincent de Paul was born on April 24, 1581, in the village of Pouy, in the province of Guyenne & Gascony, Kingdom of France, to peasant farmers. His dad was Jean de Paul & his mom was Bertrande de Moras. He wrote the name on 1 word, Depaul, but none of his correspondents did so.

He had 3 brothers & 2 sisters. He was the 3rd child & demonstrated a talent for literacy early in life. He worked as a child, herding his family’s livestock. At age 15, his dad sent him to a seminary. He paid for this by selling the family’s oxen.

For 3 years, he studied at a college in Dax, Aquitaine. It adjoined a monastery of the Friars Minor (a.k.a. the Franciscans), where he resided. In 1597, he enrolled in theology at the University of Toulouse. The atmosphere at the university was rough. Fights broke out between various factions of students, which escalated into armed battles. An official was murdered by 2 students. Vincent continued his studies, financing them by tutoring others.

Vincent was ordained subdeacon & deacon at Tarbes Cathedral in the French Great South-West, near Périgueux. This was against the regulations established by the Council of Trent, which required a minimum of 24 years old for ordination. So when he was appointed parish priest in Tilh. An appeal against the appointment was made to the Roman Curia.

Rather than respond to a lawsuit in which he would probably not have prevailed, he resigned from the position & continued his studies. On October 12, 1604, he received his Bachelor of Theology from the University of Toulouse. Later, he received a Licentiate in Canon Law from the University of Paris.

Vincent wrote a letter in July 1607 & a postscript in February 1608 that described his experience of abduction & slavery. In 1605, he sailed from Marseille on his way back from Castres, where he had gone to sell property he’d inherited from a wealthy patron in Toulouse. He was taken captive by Barbary pirates, who took him to Tunis. Vincent was auctioned off as a slave, & spent 2 years in bondage.

His 1st “master” was a fisherman. But this wasn’t the life for Vincent because he got seasick. He soon was sold. His next “master” was a spagyric physician (this is a modern medical movement based on the theories & therapies of Paracelsus), alchemist, & inventor. Vincent became fascinated by his art & was taught how to prepare the attention of men who summoned him to Istanbul.

During the passage, the old man died & Vincent was sold once again. His new “master” was a former Catholic priest & Franciscan from Nice, Guillaume Gautier. Gautier had converted to Islam to gain his freedom from slavery & was living in the mountains with 3 wives.

The 2nd wife, a Muslim by birth, was drawn to & visited Vincent in the fields to question him about his faith. She became convinced that his faith was true & admonished her husband for renouncing his Christianity. Her husband became remorseful & decided to escape back to France with his slave.

They had to wait 10 months. But finally they secretly boarded a small boat & crossed the Mediterranean, landing in Aigues-Mortes on June 29, 1607. After returning to France, Vincent went to Rome. There he continued his studies until 1609, when he was sent back to France on a mission to King Henry IV.

Once in France, he made the acquaintance of Pierre de Berulle, whom he took as his spiritual advisor. Andre Duval, of the Sorbonne, introduced him to Canfield’s Rule of Perfection.

In 1612, he was sent as a parish priest to the Church of Saint-Medard in Clichy. In less than a year, Berulle recalled him to Paris to serve as a chaplain & tutor to the Gondi family. The Gondi family was a prominent Florentine banking family and a financial partner of the Medici family.

Although Vincent had initially begun his priesthood with the intention of securing a life of leisure for himself, he underwent a change of heart after hearing the confession of a dying peasant. It was the Countess de Gondi who persuaded her husband to endow & support a group of able & zealous missionaries who would work among poor tenant farmers & country people in general.

On May 23, 1643, after King Louis XIII had passed away, Queen Anne had her husband’s will annulled by the Parlement de Paul (a judicial body composed mostly of nobles & high clergymen), thereby making her the sole Regent. Anne appointed Vincent de Paul as her spiritual advisor.

He helped her deal with religious policy & the Jansenist issue. Jansenism is/was a 17th-18th century Christian theological movement within the Catholic Church, rooted in the writings of Dutch bishop Cornelius Jansen.

Vincent is the patron of all works of charity. Several organizations inspired by his work & teaching & which claim Vincent as their founder or patron saint are grouped in a loose federation known as the Vincentian Family.

Vincent died in Paris on September 27, 1660. Vincent’s body was exhumed in 1712, 53 years after his death. The written account of an eyewitness states that “the eyes & nose alone showed some decay.” However, when the body was exhumed again during the canonization in 1737, it was found to have decomposed due to an underground flood.

According to the custom of the time, his bones were encased in a waxen figure, which is displayed in a glass reliquary in the chapel of the mother house of the Vincentian fathers in Paris (the St. Vincent de Paul Chapel). His heart is still incorrupt & is displayed separately in a reliquary in the chapel of the mother house of the Daughters of Charity.

Make a one-time donation

Your contribution is appreciated.

Make a monthly donation

Your contribution is appreciated.

Make a yearly donation

Your contribution is appreciated.

Rate this:

paracelsus arrived

paracelsus arrived
before the south gate
was unlocked

while he waited
to ask the watchman
if the pestilence had come
to wittenberg before he had

the east gate 
was opened like an eye

and the morning’s early sun
that had risen from where it waited

its shining entered 
the town like a tide

paracelsus arrived

paracelsus arrived
before the south gate
was unlocked

while he waited
to ask the watchman
if the pestilence had come
to wittenberg before he had

the east gate 
was opened like an eye

and the morning’s early sun
that had risen from where it waited

its shining entered 
the town like a tide

Sebastian Schalk ist neuer Geschäftsführer der Paracelsus Kliniken Adorf und Schöneck
Paracelsus setzt im Vogtland auf Hybrid-Klinikmodell
#Geschäftsführung #Klinikmanagement #Paracelsus #ParacelsusGesundheitszentrumAdorf #ParacelsusKlinikSchöneck #Personalie #Sachsen

https://www.medconweb.de/blog/kliniknews/sebastian-schalk-ist-neuer-geschaeftsfuehrer-der-paracelsus-kliniken-adorf-und-schoeneck/

ver.di erzielt Tarifergebnis mit Paracelsus-Kliniken
Mehr Gehalt, höhere Sonderzahlung und neue Zulagen für Beschäftigte
#Arbeitsbedingungen #Lohn #Niedersachsen #Paracelsus #Tarifverhandlungen #verdi

https://www.medconweb.de/blog/kliniknews/ver-di-erzielt-tarifergebnis-mit-paracelsus-kliniken/

“Alchemy. The link between the immemorial magic arts and modern science. Humankind’s first systematic effort to unlock the secrets of matter by reproducible experiment.”*…

As (AI/tech pro and writer) Dale Markowitz explains, for scientists of yore anything—from mermaids to alchemy—was on the table…

In 1936, the economist John Maynard Keynes purchased a trove of Isaac Newton’s unpublished notes. These included more than 100,000 words on the great physicist’s secret alchemical experiments. Keynes, shocked and awed, dubbed them “wholly magical and wholly devoid of scientific value.” This unexpected discovery, paired with things like Newton’s obsession with searching for encrypted messages in the Bible’s Book of David, showed that Newton “was not the first of the age of reason,” Keynes concluded. “He was the last of the magicians.”

When it came to fascination with the occult, Newton was hardly alone. Many contemporary scientists may cast aspersions on spells, mythical tales, and powers of divination. Not so for many of the early modern thinkers who laid the foundations of modern science. To them, the world teemed with the uncanny: witches, unicorns, mermaids, stars that foretold the future, base metals that could be coaxed into gold or distilled into elixirs of eternal life. 

These fantastical beliefs were shared by the illiterate and educated elite alike—including many of the forebears of contemporary science, including chemist Robert Boyle, who gave us modern chemistry and Boyle’s law, and biologist Carl Linnaeus, who developed the taxonomic system by which scientists classify species today. Rather than stifling discovery, their now-arcane beliefs may have helped drive them and other scientists to endure hot smoky days in the bowels of alchemical laboratories or long frigid nights on the balconies of astronomical towers.

To understand the role of magic in spurring scientific progress, it helps to understand the state of learning in Europe in those times. Throughout the Middle Ages, many scholars were fixated on the idea that knowledge could only be gleaned from ancient texts. Universities taught from incomplete, often poorly translated copies of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Galen. To stray from the giants was a crime: In 14th-century Oxford, scholars could be charged 5 shillings for contradicting Aristotle. Curiosity was considered a sin on par with lust. A powerful motivator was needed to shuck off ancient thinking.

One of the first influential thinkers to break with the old ways was the 16th-century Swiss-German physician Paracelsus. The father of toxicology, known for his pioneering use of chemicals in medicine, Paracelsus was among the first of his time to champion the importance of experimentation and observation—a philosophy which would set the foundations for the scientific method. Paracelsus showed the scholars what he thought of their old books by publicly burning his copies of Galen and Avicenna. 

But what led him to this experiment-first approach? Perhaps it was because, to Paracelsus, experimentation was a kind of magic. His writing fuses scientific observation with the occult. To him, medicine, astrology, and alchemy were inextricably linked—different ways of unveiling sacred truths hidden in nature by God. Paracelsus considered himself a kind of magus, as he believed Moses and Solomon had been, as Newton would view himself 150 years later. Paracelsus believed, though, that divine knowledge could be gained not just by studying scripture, but also by studying nature. The alchemical workbench, the night sky—these were even surer routes to God than any dusty old textbook…

[Markowitz recounts the stories of Tycho Brahe [almanac entry here], his patron Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Robert Boyle, William Harvey, and Linnaeus [here], who, in 1749, urged the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to launch a hunt for mermaids…]

… To our contemporary ears, most all of this may sound fairly ridiculous. But as Edward Donlick puts it in The Clockwork Universe, “The world was so full of marvels, in other words, that the truly scientific approach was to reserve judgment about what was possible and what wasn’t, and to observe and experiment instead.” To the 17th-century scientist, anything was on the table, so long as it could be experimentally studied.

Today, we know how the story ends: Belief in astrology, alchemy, and witchcraft declined in places where empiricism and skepticism became cornerstones of science. But perhaps early scientists’ fascination with the occult should remind us of other tenants of discovery: open-mindedness and curiosity. Witches, mermaids, and the philosopher’s stone may not have survived modern scrutiny, but it was curiosity about them that drove real progress and allowed early thinkers to stray from established norms. In this sense, curiosity is a kind of magic…

“How the Occult Gave Birth to Science,” from @dalequark.bsky.social in @nautil.us.

See also: “The importance of experimental proof, on the other hand, does not mean that without new experimental data we cannot make advances” and “Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher’s stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find.”

* John Ciardi

###

As we think about transmutation, we might spare a thought for a rough contemporary (and fellow-traveler) of Newton’s, Rasmus Bartholin; he died on this date in 1698. A physician, mathematician, and physicist, he is best known for his discovery of the optical phenomenon of double refraction. In 1669, Bartholin observed that images seen through Icelandic feldspar (calcite) were doubled and that, when the crystal was rotated, one image remained stationary while the other rotated with the crystal. Such behaviour of light could not be explained using Newton’s optical theories of the time. Subsequently, this was explained as the effect of the polarisation of the light.

Bartholin also wrote a several mathematical works and made astronomical observations (including the comets of 1665). And he is famed for his medical work, in particular his introduction of quinine in the fight against malaria.

(Bartholin’s family was packed with pioneering scientists, 12 of whom became professors at the University of Copenhagen; perhaps most notable, his elder brother Thomas, who discovered the lymphatic system in humans and advanced the theory of “refrigeration anesthesia”(being the first to describe it scientifically).

#alchemy #astology #culture #Discovery #doubleRefraction #history #IsaacNewton #Linnaeus #lymphaticSystem #malaria #occult #optics #Paracelsus #philosophy #quinine #RasmusBartholin #Science #Technology #ThomasBartholin #TychoBrahe #witchcraft

“Alchemy. The link between the immemorial magic arts and modern science. Humankind’s first systematic effort to unlock the secrets of matter by reproducible experiment.”*…

As (AI/tech pro and writer) Dale Markowitz explains, for scientists of yore anything—from mermaids to alchemy—was on the table…

In 1936, the economist John Maynard Keynes purchased a trove of Isaac Newton’s unpublished notes. These included more than 100,000 words on the great physicist’s secret alchemical experiments. Keynes, shocked and awed, dubbed them “wholly magical and wholly devoid of scientific value.” This unexpected discovery, paired with things like Newton’s obsession with searching for encrypted messages in the Bible’s Book of David, showed that Newton “was not the first of the age of reason,” Keynes concluded. “He was the last of the magicians.”

When it came to fascination with the occult, Newton was hardly alone. Many contemporary scientists may cast aspersions on spells, mythical tales, and powers of divination. Not so for many of the early modern thinkers who laid the foundations of modern science. To them, the world teemed with the uncanny: witches, unicorns, mermaids, stars that foretold the future, base metals that could be coaxed into gold or distilled into elixirs of eternal life. 

These fantastical beliefs were shared by the illiterate and educated elite alike—including many of the forebears of contemporary science, including chemist Robert Boyle, who gave us modern chemistry and Boyle’s law, and biologist Carl Linnaeus, who developed the taxonomic system by which scientists classify species today. Rather than stifling discovery, their now-arcane beliefs may have helped drive them and other scientists to endure hot smoky days in the bowels of alchemical laboratories or long frigid nights on the balconies of astronomical towers.

To understand the role of magic in spurring scientific progress, it helps to understand the state of learning in Europe in those times. Throughout the Middle Ages, many scholars were fixated on the idea that knowledge could only be gleaned from ancient texts. Universities taught from incomplete, often poorly translated copies of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Galen. To stray from the giants was a crime: In 14th-century Oxford, scholars could be charged 5 shillings for contradicting Aristotle. Curiosity was considered a sin on par with lust. A powerful motivator was needed to shuck off ancient thinking.

One of the first influential thinkers to break with the old ways was the 16th-century Swiss-German physician Paracelsus. The father of toxicology, known for his pioneering use of chemicals in medicine, Paracelsus was among the first of his time to champion the importance of experimentation and observation—a philosophy which would set the foundations for the scientific method. Paracelsus showed the scholars what he thought of their old books by publicly burning his copies of Galen and Avicenna. 

But what led him to this experiment-first approach? Perhaps it was because, to Paracelsus, experimentation was a kind of magic. His writing fuses scientific observation with the occult. To him, medicine, astrology, and alchemy were inextricably linked—different ways of unveiling sacred truths hidden in nature by God. Paracelsus considered himself a kind of magus, as he believed Moses and Solomon had been, as Newton would view himself 150 years later. Paracelsus believed, though, that divine knowledge could be gained not just by studying scripture, but also by studying nature. The alchemical workbench, the night sky—these were even surer routes to God than any dusty old textbook…

[Markowitz recounts the stories of Tycho Brahe [almanac entry here], his patron Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Robert Boyle, William Harvey, and Linnaeus [here], who, in 1749, urged the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to launch a hunt for mermaids…]

… To our contemporary ears, most all of this may sound fairly ridiculous. But as Edward Donlick puts it in The Clockwork Universe, “The world was so full of marvels, in other words, that the truly scientific approach was to reserve judgment about what was possible and what wasn’t, and to observe and experiment instead.” To the 17th-century scientist, anything was on the table, so long as it could be experimentally studied.

Today, we know how the story ends: Belief in astrology, alchemy, and witchcraft declined in places where empiricism and skepticism became cornerstones of science. But perhaps early scientists’ fascination with the occult should remind us of other tenants of discovery: open-mindedness and curiosity. Witches, mermaids, and the philosopher’s stone may not have survived modern scrutiny, but it was curiosity about them that drove real progress and allowed early thinkers to stray from established norms. In this sense, curiosity is a kind of magic…

“How the Occult Gave Birth to Science,” from @dalequark.bsky.social in @nautil.us.

See also: “The importance of experimental proof, on the other hand, does not mean that without new experimental data we cannot make advances” and “Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher’s stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find.”

* John Ciardi

###

As we think about transmutation, we might spare a thought for a rough contemporary (and fellow-traveler) of Newton’s, Rasmus Bartholin; he died on this date in 1698. A physician, mathematician, and physicist, he is best known for his discovery of the optical phenomenon of double refraction. In 1669, Bartholin observed that images seen through Icelandic feldspar (calcite) were doubled and that, when the crystal was rotated, one image remained stationary while the other rotated with the crystal. Such behaviour of light could not be explained using Newton’s optical theories of the time. Subsequently, this was explained as the effect of the polarisation of the light.

Bartholin also wrote a several mathematical works and made astronomical observations (including the comets of 1665). And he is famed for his medical work, in particular his introduction of quinine in the fight against malaria.

(Bartholin’s family was packed with pioneering scientists, 12 of whom became professors at the University of Copenhagen; perhaps most notable, his elder brother Thomas, who discovered the lymphatic system in humans and advanced the theory of “refrigeration anesthesia”(being the first to describe it scientifically).

#alchemy #astology #culture #Discovery #doubleRefraction #history #IsaacNewton #Linnaeus #lymphaticSystem #malaria #occult #optics #Paracelsus #philosophy #quinine #RasmusBartholin #Science #Technology #ThomasBartholin #TychoBrahe #witchcraft

1️⃣1️⃣Check out who Paracelsus was 🧙‍♂️✨ and where he lived in Basel 🏡🇨🇭!

https://www.chemistryviews.org/which-famous-alchemist-lived-in-this-house-in-basel-switzerland/

#History #Paracelsus
#chemistryadvent #chemistryadventcalendar #chemistry #chemistryviews #chemviews #chemistryhistory #chemisryquiz #funwithchemistry

1️⃣1️⃣Check out who Paracelsus was 🧙‍♂️✨ and where he lived in Basel 🏡🇨🇭!

https://www.chemistryviews.org/which-famous-alchemist-lived-in-this-house-in-basel-switzerland/

#History #Paracelsus
#chemistryadvent #chemistryadventcalendar #chemistry #chemistryviews #chemviews #chemistryhistory #chemisryquiz #funwithchemistry

SQLAlchemy is a powerful tool that lets Python developers define their database schemas using simple classes. I made Paracelsus to turn those SQLAlchemy defined databases into diagrams that can be used to visualize the schema.

https://blog.tedivm.com/open-source/2024/01/visualizing-sqlalchemy-databases-using-paracelsus/