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IN HIS works, Paracelsus44 (1490-1541) emphasizes that man is a microcosm in the macrocosm of the universe, depending on all the laws working therein. Both men and nature have a frequent and reciprocal influence upon one another which reaches into the smallest particles through water, earth, sun, season, movement of stars, food, soil, etc. Above all we must realize that there is nothing in heaven or on earth that does not also exist in man himself. We can say, therefore, that the system which governs the human being itself is "Great Nature." (Vol. I, p. 25) The body needs nutrition through which it is bound to nature. However, that which we have to give to the body as nutrition also contains toxins and damaging substances. In order to deal with the harmful things which we have to use to our disadvantage, the Lord gave us an alchemist (stomach) not to absorb the poisons that we eat together with the good nourishing food, but to separate it from the favorable substances.
The human being has to acquire knowledge of what to eat and drink, and what he has to weave and wear, because nature gave him the instinct of self-preservation. For the things that one does for the prolongation of one's life are ordained by Great Nature. If someone eats what is useful for his health and avoids other things that may shorten his life then he is a man of wisdom and self-control. All that we do should serve to prolong our life.
Many undiscovered qualities are hidden in our nutrition and they are able to counteract the damaging forces of the stars (such as sunburn). According to Paracelsus, some of the Great Nature's forces help produce animal urges and bad instincts in man which God-given reason and judgment can counteract and overcome. Food and drink can cause morbid conditions; he believes that nutrition aids the development of all characteristics: good or bad, gentle or cruel. Man in his character and disposition reacts to his food like the soil to fertilizer. As a garden can be improved with the right fertilizer so can man be helped with the right food. In the hand of the physician nutrition can be the highest and best remedy. (Arcanum) Diet must be the basis of all medical therapy, yet diet should not be a treatment in itself. But it will enable Great Nature to develop and fully unfold its own healing power. But even nutrition is subject to the influence of heaven and earth; therefore, the physician must study its combinations in order to apply them at the right time and break the power of the disease. (II, p. 699)1
Diet should also be prescribed differently for each sex, for it should not serve to accumulate blood and flesh. It should rather effect the elimination of the foodstuffs which have spoiled and poisoned blood and flesh. Therefore medication and special nutrition are necessary. In the treatment of a patient the physician must consider that the nutrition as well as the medication is in agreement with the patient's sex, this is not necessary in the case of a healthy person.
Paracelsus gives greatest consideration to diet in constitutional diseases which, in the widest sense, could also be called diseases of the metabolism (he calls them the tartaric acid or stone-forming diseases). Tartaric acids are contained in our food but they do not belong in human beings. These particles are tiny pieces of minerals, sand, clay or glue which in the human body turn into stone. The human stomach is not created with the ability to separate these substances. This separaticn is achieved by the "subtile stomachs" which are built into the messenterium, liver, kidney, bladder and all other intestines. If their function ceases, various diseases will result in the organs concerned through the coagulation of these tartaric substances by the animal spirits of man (the sperma or "Spiritus des Salzes"). Therewith Paracelsus puts into this group of diseases the stone-forming ones, as well as the Phleboliths, vascular cramps, dental diseases, chronic digestive disturbances, stomach and intestinal ulcers, diseases of the liver and spleen, gout and arthritis, bronchiectasis and bronchitis, (not tuberculosis), for he separates it from this group, at least in its more serious forms) and finally brain diseases. At that early period Paracelsus had recognized that the endogen and exogen stimulants are very closely connected in constitutional diseases. He places the exogen stimulants exclusively into nutrition and with that he comes close to our modern thoughts in respect to a therapy of nutrition. We consume tartaric acid mainly in leguminous plants and grains, stalks and roots. Those transform into a tough sweet slime, while milk foods, meat and fish contain a clay-like mass, wine forms a tartar (winestone) and water a slimy stone.
As prophylaxis against tartaric diseases, the physician must pay special attention to the preparation of the food. (I, p. 138) "The nutrition of man - food and drink - should be especially cleansed from tartar." Furthermore, the specifically guilty tartars in the different regions should be ascertained and excluded from the food. For instance, the "Kehlheimer wine would cause the body a large amount of tartaric separation work but not the Neckar wine, therefore the Kehlheimer should be forbidden."
From many observations I would like to mention one: "as far as I am concerned, I have never seen a country where there are so few tartaric diseases as in `Veltlin' (a valley in the Italian Alps, south of Lake Como) where there are less than in Germany or Italy, France or the Occidentor, the European Orient. In this country, Veltlin, the inhabitants have neither podagra nor colicam, contracturam nor calculum. It is such a healthy country that even that which grows there is healthy, and not many better, healthier locations could be found in all my far travels." (I, p. 600)
For the cure of some diseases Paracelsus suggests special dietary prescriptions. First for the bladder and kidney stones (I, p. 849) the following are forbidden: milk products, cheese, alkaline or lead-containing waters, rain water, sour sea slacks, sour wine, meat crabs and fish. Substances of rich mineral and purin content are intuitively forbidden to prevent phosphatic and uric acid stone formations. (When pains are present poppy seed (morphine) is recommended to render the bladder insensitive.) On the other hand, there are the following remedies (I, p. 152) which reduce and do not transmute or precipitate, for prevention of bladder and gall stones: "There is nothing so much to recommend as butter and olives." Heartburn (II, p. 593) derives from wine, salty meat and venison. These should be avoided; as a remedy he suggests much milk, St. John's bread, chalk (alkali!), "sealing earth" (magnesium?), armenic clay and ocean chalk. Then he prescribes daily vitamin doses through consumption of melon juice and fruit, continuous usage of which should prevent the formation of stones in the intestinal tract.
In a consilium, (II, p. 472) Paracelsus recommends against Podagra and imminent stroke besides the medical cures of the watering places such as Pfeffers and Wildbad (Gastein) as the following: "when you are taking the baths you should be abstemious with food and drink, and with women you should have little or no intercourse." "Fish is forbidden - but when fried it does the least damage; no tough, hard meat and nothing from the pig is permitted. As drink, an old, mild, clear red wine would serve best; beer should be taken only rarely and then it should not be consumed without nutmeg and fermented bread." As prophylaxis, he recommends: (II, p. 487) "this is my advice how you can protect yourselves, namely, four things should you avoid - strong smelling wine - lascivious food - anger - women; and the more abstemious you shall live in these things the better." For prevention against stroke of brain or spinal cord, dizziness and pleurisy, he advises that the following foods should be avoided as much as possible: spices, strong wine, herb wine, garlic, mustard, vinegar and fish, especially the fried foods. Abstention is good, but one must not suffer hunger or thirst and should stick to one's daily habits at all hours. This is not a recommendation for fasting-cures.
In a certain aetiological contrast to the tartaric diseases he puts the infectious diseases. In Paracelsus' time an attack of disease through infection by bacilli was not yet known; in his astrological kind of conception he traces the origin of infectious diseases back to the effect of the stars. These consume the patient through their fires, they cause the body to dry up and wither; therefore, the arcanum in these patients is moist food and consumption of large amounts of moisture. For the patient sick with the plague, he says (I, p. 729) that one should not give them any meat, eggs, fish and nothing fried. For drink, they should be given only soup of water or barley sauce with rose vinegar. The most useful drink is barley water (most of this is the original teaching of Hippocrates).
In themselves, the statements of Paracelsus about diet are not uniform but one can notice everywhere in them the thought that combines them; their chemical effect. Everywhere in his writings it can be perceived how he would like to dissect everything into the finest particles (atoms) and find an interpretation; it seems as if he would like a penetrating power to enable him to look into things microscopically. The layman only sees the surface; the physician must be able to visualize the inside and the hidden facts which combine to form the whole, regardless of whether it is a piece of wood or bone. Marvelous are his ideas about the chemical reactions and his passionate love for all chemical occurrences which he applied to the reactions of the body long before his time. Paracelsus seeks to develop everything from its origin. In that he always observes three things: the heaven, the earth and the microcosm; it is similar with healing. Man can only be comprehended through a macrocosm; not through himself alone. Only the knowledge about this harmony perfects the physician.
This short condensation does not take a critical stand in the historical sense towards the statements of Paracelsus as measured against the knowledge of his time. It merely seeks to show how stimulating his writings are and the wealth of ideas which shines through everywhere, how intense his urge to find causal connections or at least to intimate them in his passionate way and bring them in accordance with the eternal laws in nature outside of the body and the same laws ruling inside the microcosm.