THE TEXT OF THE PARAMIRUM BY THEOPHRASTUS H. Theophraustus von Hohenheim, commonly known as Paracelsus. FOR MEDICAL DILIGENCE

FIRST BOOK OF PROLOGUES

Number I

FIRST PROLOGUE

You should know that all diseases are healed in five ways: and we thus begin our medicine with the cure, and not with the causes, for the reason that the cure reveals the cause to us. [A]

[A] Our argument is based on this: that there are five ways of healing. This is as much as to say that there are five kinds of medicine, or five arts, or five faculties faculties (faculteten): distinct branches of medical knowledge or specialized "powers" of healing, or five types of physician. Among these five, each one is a sufficient faculty of medicine to heal all diseases. For in five ways, as has been indicated, five faculties of medicine are discovered, where each one for itself should hold the degree original: gradum of a physician—a sufficient physician and a skillful physician—to heal every occurrence of disease and infirmity. This applies to both medicines likely referring to the traditional division of internal physic and external surgery, as he who belongs to one of these same degrees—one of the five faculties—is alone a sufficient physician. And in whichever faculty one wishes to learn, experience, explore, and have the degree proven, as one who wishes to make use of it;