Paracelsus was the son of a Swiss doctor and chemist. He was further introduced to chemistry when he trained as a mining overseer, learning the practical metallurgy of his time. He turned to medicine as a career and championed the use of alchemy to create cures for disease rather than quick wealth. Scornful of the state of medicine of his day, he saw alchemy as a path to more effective treatment of disease. He developed a treatment for St. Vitus’s disease and used mercury compounds to treat syphilis. More important, he founded medicinal chemistry, then known as iatrochemistry.
A Catalogue of works published 1529-1793 preserved in Glasgow University Library, with an appendix listing manuscripts containing items by or about Paracelsus
