French Paracelsians The Chemical Challenge to Medical and Scientific Tradition in Early Modern France

Shortly after the medical authority of Galen had been re-established during the Renaissance, Paracelsus, a Swiss-German firebrand, proposed a new approach to natural philosophy and medicine - through chemistry. The resulting debate between Paracelsians and Galenists lasted more than a century, embroiling medical establishments across Europe. In France the debate was particularly bitter, with the Medical Faculty in Paris determined to block the introduction of chemistry to medicine in any field. Debus elucidates this important polemic, not only in regard to Paracelsian pharmaceutical chemistry and clinical cosmology, but also the development of chemical physiology, and its struggle with seventeenth-century medicine dominated by mechanical philosophy.Debus, Allen G. is the author of 'French Paracelsians The Chemical Challenge to Medical and Scientific Tradition in Early Modern France' with ISBN 9780521400497 and ISBN 052140049X.