Abstract
Long recognized as an important antecedent to the development of modern chemistry, Paracelsian chemical philosophy is often left out of historians’ reconstruction of “chymical” matter theory in the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, owing to a thematic incommensurability between the new mechanistic theories and the vital philosophy of the Paracelsians. As a result, vital philosophy is more often characterized in terms of “correspondences” and “affinities” than as an explanation for material transformation. This paper explores a key component of vitalist matter theory, Paracelsian semina (seeds) as basic organic entities and principles of development, and how the concept of their “transplantation” illuminates both their inner vital nature and their spatialization as material principles. The result is a concept of chemical-mechanical action that is far different from the mechanical matter theory of the Cartesians. By defining temporality as an essential characteristic of seminal matter, the late sixteenth-century Paracelsian theorist Petrus Severinus provided a metaphysically sound basis for explaining internal agency as a foundational property of material being. Severinus’ conception of semina was widely read and commented on by medical writers and natural philosophers involved in constructing the “new science” of the seventeenth century.
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Notes
- 1.
This historiography has been clearly propounded by Newman and Principe, who identify Marie Boas Hall as a chief architect of the idea that Boyle was a pivotal figure in discarding “alchemical” matter theory and elaborating a new “chemistry” on the basis of mechanical philosophy and a corpuscular matter theory derived from Pierre Gassendi’s resurrection of classical atomism. For a concise statement of this see Newman 2006, 6–8; In chapter three, Newman identifies Andreas Libavius as one link in the incorporation of Paracelsian vitalism into corpuscular matter theory, and it is evident that he was drawing in part on ideas about semina discussed below.
- 2.
For an overview, see Lüthy et al. 2001.
- 3.
Paracelsus used the term transplantation with a sense much like Severinus explicitly and repeatedly in Book Three of “Von Blatern, Lähmi, Beulen, Löchern und Zitrachten der Franzosen und irs Gleichen, inhaltend zehn schöne Bücher,” in Paracelsus 1922, Abt. 1, Bd. 6, 301–479. It is conceivable that this was one of Severinus’ sources. On Paracelsus’ use of the term, see Shackelford 2014 (forthcoming).
- 4.
Severinus 1571.
- 5.
Ibid., 58. “Semina sunt vincula utriusque naturæ, visibilia invisibilibus coniugentia.” He says much the same about astra on 46: “Astra sunt vincula rerum.”
- 6.
Libavius 1615, title: “A Harbinger of the Vital Philosophy of the Paracelsians … On Vital Philosophy from Severinus according to Johannes Hartmann.”
- 7.
Severinus 1571, 49. “Surda et coeca est omnis Philosophia, quæ horum contemplatione neglecta, priuationes, informes materias, et mortuas qualitates sectatur. Etenim Elementorum cognitionem, sine his adipisci non possumus. Semina enim uel Astra, officia Elementorum explicauere.” The term explicatio used in this sense conjurs the metaphysical explanations of identity, multiplicity, and causal relationships that were elaborated by Nicholas of Cusa.
- 8.
Articles and books treating mechanical philosophy are many. For an overview, see Garber 2006.
- 9.
- 10.
For example, Severinus 1571, 138: “De corruptibilibus Radicibus, Elementis, Principijs, earumque Mixtione cum puris, copiosius agemus in morborum Generationibus: mortis enim Anatomiam, et morborum continent.” [We will more abundantly treat the corruptible roots, elements, and principles, and their mixture with the pure in [the chapter on] the generation of diseases, for they contain the anatomy of death and diseases.]
- 11.
Terms like biology and botany are anachronistic in the late Renaissance and early modern periods, and I am subsuming under the term “medical theorists” all writers who used natural-philosophical ideas that were associated with medical education and medical writing, whether they were using them to elaborate a medical theory per se or more broadly in what would later be called biological studies.
- 12.
Robert Boyle ’s matter theory has been examined by several authors. See, for example, Kaplan 1993, especially 56–68.
- 13.
The difficulty that self-actualization, directed growth, and coordinated activities presented for mechanical reductionists in the modern period is a recurrent theme in Hall 1969.
- 14.
See Shackelford 2004, 178–80 for an analysis of Severinus ’ use of the terms scientia and lithurgia and the identification of the latter with liturgia by seventeenth-century readers.
- 15.
Despite Kurt Sprengel’s placement of Paracelsus and the Paracelsians prominently in the narrative of the development of medicine in volume 3 of his mammoth history of Western medicine (Sprengel 1794), where he devoted 231 pages to Paracelsus and the Paracelsians, twentieth-century historiography of Paracelsus has been strongly influenced by Allen G. Debus, who situated Paracelsus as the impetus behind early-modern “chemical philosophy” in his influential two-volume The Chemical Philosophy (Debus 1977) and several other books. The term “chemical philosophy” is early modern, but to modern ears it places Paracelsus in a chemical context. An exception is Walter Pagel (Pagel 1967, 336–37), who linked the vital philosophy of Paracelsus and Severinus to the ideas of William Harvey . In his later development of these ideas (Pagel 1976, 172) he appears to have understood the Paracelsians in just this light when he wrote that “parallels can be found between Harvey and early vitalists, notably among chemical philosophers such as Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Quercetanus and Fludd. Such parallels do not necessarily spell an ‘influence’ of one savant on the other, but are due to their common vitalist sources and persuasion.” This perspective builds on Pagel’s earlier suggestion that William Harvey may have been familiar with the support given to Aristotle’s theory of epigenesis by Paracelsians Petrus Severinus and Johannes Marcus Marci of Kronland.
- 16.
The temptation to refer to Severinus ’ Paracelsian ideas as “medical” rather than “biological” merely exchanges one anachronism for another, unless the reader is careful to disassociate the modern conception of the scope, identity, and purposes of “medicine” from a sixteenth-century conception, which, for Severinus, included much of what we today would call agricultural biology and animal husbandry. Was Paracelsian thought “medical” rather than “biological”? Inasmuch as vital philosophy extended to plants and minerals, and even planets and stars, it was more than medical or even veterinary, in both the classical and the modern senses . The classical roots of “medicine” refer to healing, and clearly Paracelsian “medicine” was more broad than healing – it was vital philosophy, philosophy of life.
- 17.
Newman 2006, various places, esp. 120: “This left the other alternative, that the gold and silver existed together as heterogeneities in a compound, and that their substantial forms had not really been supplanted by a forma mixti. To admit this, however, … was equivalent to saying that the gold and silver were composed of semipermanent particles having their own unchanged substantial forms.” Newman does not explicitly identify these forms as essentially unchanging, but gives the impression that they are in this case by saying that they are unchanged and resulting in the particles’ “semipermanence.”
- 18.
On the importance of reversible reactions to Bill Newman’s assessment of revolutionary changes in seventeenth-century matter theory, see his comments in Newman 2006, xiii: “My use of ‘reversible reaction’ has nothing to do with the modern notion of chemical equilibrium but rather with the alchemists’ rebuttal of the strict Aristotelian concept of ‘perfect mixture’, according to which (at least in the eye s of the major scholastic schools of thought) there was no possibility of reversing the process that we now refer to as a chemical reaction.” Also, 224: “The theory of perfect mixture and the concomitant denial of its reversibility were iconic features of a conventional scholasticism whose overthrow was genuinely epoch-making.”
- 19.
Aristotle, Metaphysics IX 1050a-b (McKeon 1941, 830–31): “Where, then, the result is something apart from the exercise, the actuality is in the thing that is being made, e.g. the act of building is in the thing that is being built … Obviously, therefore, the substance or form is actuality”; “If, then, there are any entities or substances such as the dialecticians say the Ideas are, there must be something much more scientific than science-itself and something more mobile than movement-itself; for these will be more of the nature of actualities …”
- 20.
Nussbaum 1978, 71: “But in the case of living things, it is very clear that to explain behavior we must refer, not to surface configuration, but to the functional organization that the individuals share with other members of their species. This is the form; this, and not the shape, remains the same as long as the creature is the same creature.” My emphasis.
- 21.
- 22.
The salience of Severinus ’ semina theory for late sixteenth and seventeenth-century readers is explained in Shackelford 2004.
- 23.
See Pagel 1967, 239–247. One is reminded of William Harvey ’s De Motu Cordis (1653), in Harvey 1995, p. 34: “In a Hen’s egg I shewed the first beginning of the Chick, like a little cloud … in the midst of which cloud there was a point of blood which did beat, so little, that when it was contracted it disappeared, and vanish’d out of our sight, and in its dilation, shew’d it self again red and small, as the point of a needle; insomuch as betwixt being seen, and not being seen, as it were betwixt being and not being it did represent a beating, and the beginning of life.” Emphasis added. I have puzzled over the metaphysical implications for Harvey of the explicit image he presented of the embryo arising from an invisible seed : “Ita ut inter ipsum videri, et non videri quasi inter esse et non esse, palpitationem et vitæ principium ageret.”
- 24.
Giordano Bruno grappled with this idea of locating material atoms with no parts, and thus no extension, in De minimo. On Bruno’s vitalist atomism, see Gatti 2001.
- 25.
Shackelford 2004, 175–76. Pagel 1982, 8–9, admitted that little is known of Paracelsus ’ early biography, but is persuaded by Kurt Goldammer’s opinion that he was educated chiefly by his father and churchmen. This certainly explains the echoes of medieval scholastic natural philosophical and theological debates that one hears in his ideas, which often have more of a medieval character than that of Renaissance humanism . Webster 2008, 10–11, is more agnostic about Paracelsus’ academic formation, suggesting that Paracelsus’ early critics, who believed he had gathered his ideas from peasants, might have been more accurate.
- 26.
Indeed, I believe Severinus used this duality to place his conception of semina as bearers of intrinsically incorporeal developmental progress within a corpuscular framework and, more generally, to characterize his conception of Paracelsian “vital philosophy” as a reaction against materialist tendencies in natural philosophy and medicine.
- 27.
Severinus 1571, 131. Itaque generationem esse progressionem seminum asserimus: in qua, ex fontibus, abyssis, et vitalibus principiis ordinata corporum explicatione, in hanc mundanam scenam, definitis temporibus, progredientia. Individuorum renovatione, specierum perpetuitatem custodiunt. Fierique in hac lithurgia. Ex invisibilibus visibilia, ex incorporeis corporea, potestate vitalis immortalisque scientiæ in universa natura vigentis.
- 28.
Ibid., 79–80, in chapter eight, De generatione rerum naturalium et seminum mechanica lithurgia. “Itaque omnia videntur propter semina facta esse, et in iis contineri totius Creaturæ dispensationem, ut antea quoque admonivimus. Quæcunque enim hic alterationes, mutationes, motus apparent, non sunt nisi fluxus seminum, corporum consumtionibus, restaurationibus, transplantationibus, vicissitudines definitas ostendentium.”
- 29.
Ibid. “Hoc est: ‘Nihil fit quod prius non erat, neque quicquam perit, sed permixta et discreta alterantur. Homines vero opinantur hoc ex Orco in lucem auctum generari, illud vero ex luce in Orcum imminutum perire ac corrumpi.’ … Ita Orpheus quoque et prisci Theologi consueverunt, Tenebras, Noctem, Quietem, Orcum, eadem significatione accipientes.” [That is [quoting and translating Hippocrates’ Greek]: ‘nothing comes into being that did not exist before, and nothing perishes, but mixed and separated, things are changed. But in fact, men supposed that the increased thing is brought forth from death into light, that the diminished passes away from light into death and is destroyed.’ … So Orpheus, too, and the prisci theologi were accustomed, understanding darkness, night, sleep, and death in that same sense .]
- 30.
Ibid: 4. “Horum vestigiis insistens Theophrastus ille Paracelsus , nostris temporibus universam Medicinam immutavit. Elementorum naturas et conditiones longe diverso modo exponens, Generationum ac Transplantationum doctrinam cumulate clareque proposuit. Astronomiæ vitalis Methodum revocans morborum Generationes et Transplantationes aliis Mechanicis ascripsit, repudiata humorum familia.”
- 31.
Mebane 1989 lucidly puts Ficino’s astrological vision into a broad context of Renaissance Platonist thought.
- 32.
- 33.
On these images and Tycho Brahe’s involvement with alchemy and his relationship with Severinus , see Shackelford 1993.
- 34.
On the Emerald Tablet, see Ruska 1926.
- 35.
Severinus 1571, 96. The temporal manifestations of seeds are in part affected by the elemental bodies they take on; terrestrial ones are slowed down by their earthly matter, but even among these there are variations determined by the seminal programming: “In ipsis quoque procreationibus terrenis, ratione seminum, quædam celeres habent periodos ad Exaltationem et insequentem declinationem subito festinant. Aliæ longioribus intervallis circuitus absoluunt: habent enim, ut magnitudines, ita durationis quoque innatam legem” [In those very terrestrial procreations, too, certain [things] have swifter periods, by reason of [their] seeds; they suddenly hasten to exaltation and ensuing decline. Others complete [their] cycles in longer intervals, for they have an innate law of duration as well as of magnitude.] It is worth noting that the limitations that material nature placed on divine seminal expression as development, which Severinus built into his Paracelsian biology, is reminiscent of Galen’s insistence that the divine creator’s power is not total, but rather limited by material nature, and was therefore an idea that was readily available to students of medicine. For a discussion of Galen’s ideas on omnipotence, see French 1994, 158–59.
- 36.
Severinus 1571, 52–53: “Quot, quanti, Philosophi, totam Astronomiam soli Firmamento ascripserunt: reliquorum Elementorum vicissitudines, non ab innatis astris, sed a coelestibus absolui prodiderunt: et, si Diis placet, etiam seminarias virtutes et foecunditates, ex coelo inconsiderate deduxerunt. At certe, quæcunque in coelo explicata conspiciuntur, in coeteris quoque Elementis, virtute et vitali potestate continentur.” [What numerous and even great philosophers have attributed the whole of astronomy to the firmament alone! They have reported that the vicissitudes of the rest of the elements are carried out not by innate stars, but by celestial ones. And, if you will, they have even rashly deduced seminal virtues and fertilities from the heavens. But surely, whatever things are perceived to be unfolded in the heavens are also contained in the rest of the elements, by a virtue and vital power.]
- 37.
Ibid., 53. Following hard upon the previous quotation: “A quibus [innatis astris] actiones proficiscuntur: in quibus Scientiæ mechanicique rerum processus vigent: in quibus temporum decreta momenta custodiuntur.”
- 38.
For a discussion of the meanings of these terms and how semina function in Severinus ’ biological philosophy, see Shackelford 2004, 176–85.
- 39.
Severinus ’ Idea medicinæ philosophicæ (Severinus 1571) is replete with such phrases, for example: predestined timings as characteristics compared to movements, “motuumque leges et temporum prædestinationes” (51), fixed or determined moments, “temporum decreta momenta (53), specific intervals of times or timings, “certis temporum intervallis” (54) and “definito temporum intervallo” (56), periods or timings of rest and work, “quietis et laborum tempora” (57), inborn laws of timings “contra innatas temporum leges” (280), timings expressing seasonality, “pro natura seminum, tempus morborum, vel vernum, vel autumnale, vel hybernum, vel solstitiale obtinebunt” (288), timings as one characteristic of the celestial stars, “visibilium astrorum distinctas proprietates, officia, tempora” (288–89), and as internal characteristics of bodies, “in quibus temporum, saporum, odorum, colorum, caliditatis, frigiditatis, coagulationis, sed non in mundanæ, figuræ, sed non externæ, proprietates constantes custodiuntur” (319–20).
- 40.
- 41.
Hall 1969, v. 2, 67 hints at this when he writes that “What happened in the eighteenth century was, in part, a continuation of the Galenic mode of interpretation but with the difference that the latent equivalents [faculties, etc.] were now generally regarded not as Aristotelian-Galenic ‘qualitative movements’ but, usually, as insensible contractions, vibrations, or other displacements of the microconstituents … of the living system. This shift was undoubtedly in part an outgrowth of the seventeenth-century transition to a predominantly mechanical … world picture.” That is, the concept of motion as broadly-conceived change shifted from qualitative alteration to local motion with the formation of mechanical philosophy in the Scientific Revolution, which explained changes in quality, like quality itself, in terms of local motions of and collisions of corpuscles.
- 42.
Newman 2006, 153 locates the transition from reliance on Aristotelian substantial forms to explain change to the local motion of corpuscles in the work of Daniel Sennert, who himself did not quite abandon the concept of substantial form, but deprived it of its explanatory power; Robert Boyle and posterity would complete the job – see Newman and Principe 2002.
- 43.
Consider some of the Cartesian mechanisms, such as his explanation for terrestrial magnetism, that even contemporaries found implausible. For discussion of Descartes ’ images and their place in his projection of natural philosophy, see Lüthy 2006, esp. 120–26. On the enduring legacy of vitalism in post-Cartesian physiology, see Hall 1969.
- 44.
Severinus 1571, 48–9: “Horum itaque ministerio mundana provincia administratur, temporum prædestinationes, motuum leges, generationum et transplantationum constantes lithurgiæ absolvuntur.”
- 45.
Ibid., Chap. 10 (“De Generatione humana, et Transplantationibus Generationi supervenientibus”) applies this idea of transplantation specifically to human generation .
- 46.
Ibid., 99. “Si vero moderatiores fuerint impressiones, loca non plane inimica, Generationis relicta spe, Transplantationis consilium aggredietur Natura, fietque quod non vult, ut cum Hippocrate loquamur.” Severinus did not quote or cite Hippocrates here, but his comment refers back to his earlier statement (92), “Validioribus vero tincturis confluentibus, mixtione signaturæ mutabuntur, fietque quod non volunt, seminum generatione in sterilem transplantationem conversa.” His analysis appears to be based on his Paracelsian reading of Regimen I.v,14-17 (Hippocrates 1931, 236–37), which he quoted in Greek and translated (Severinus 1571, 92) “Hoc est: Omnibus inter se ultro citroque commeantibus et conspirantibus unumquodque destinatum fatum explore limitibus suæ naturæ custoditis; fierique a seminibus Omnia per divinam necessitate asserit, et quæ volunt et quæ non volunt.” It therefore appears that the account of generation in Regimen I, read through the lens of the Paracelsian Philosophia ad Athenienses, provided an influential non-Aristotelian classical legitimation for Severinus’ vital philosophy.
- 47.
Ibid., 140. “Individuorum Transplantationes dico, in quibus manente Radice signaturæ mutantur, ut colores, sapores, magnitudines, figuræ, etc. ita tamen ut maneat etiamnum imperium. Radicis et familiæ suæ certa signa, quamvis vehementer immutata referre possit. … Specierum vero Transplantationes intelligo, ubi omnibus signaturis immutatis novæ familiæ insignia manifeste repræsentantur.”
- 48.
Ibid., 141: “Thus we have observed that mustard has degenerated into mint, the turnip into the radish, imperatoria into angelica, wheat into darnel, basil into thyme, and many transplantations of this kind. In all these the seeds seem equivocal, which can be the principles of many differing individuals with almost all properties. Thus in the seed of wheat, the form of darnel lies hidden, but as an attendant, equivocal and accidental.” [Sic Sysimbrium in Mentam, Rapam in Raphanum, Imperatoriam in Angelicam, Triticum in Lolium, Ocimum in Serpyllum degenerasse et multas huiusmodi Transplantationes conspeximus. In quibus omnibus semina videntur æquivoca, quæ multorum Individuorum fere omnibus proprietatibus dissidentium Principia esse possunt. Sic in semine Tritici Forma Lolii delitescit, sed ministra, æquivoca, accidens.]
- 49.
Ibid, 141–42: “In the same way the rudiments of mint lie concealed and be subordinate in sysimbrium, as long as the elements and principles of mustard maintain their authority by a strong and vital power. But if, with the rays of other stars flowing together, the beginnings of mint will have obtained powerful increases, then the mint will dominate, and mustard will be subordinate. The situation is similar in the turnip and radish, and all the rest.” [Eodemque modo in Sysimbrio Menthæ rudimenta latent ministrantque, quousque Sysymbrii Elementa, Principia, imperium robore vitalique potestate obtinuerint. Quod si aliorum Astrorum radijs confluentibus, Menthæ exordia incrementa sumserint robusta, dominabitur Mentha, servietque sysymbrium. In Rapa et Raphano similiter, et cæteris omnibus.]
- 50.
Ibid., 142: “Transplantations of individuals in the vegetables are so frequent that philosophers have taken the use of the term from this. Thus wild things are tamed, flavors are made mild, colors are altered, the times of maturation are accelerated or retarded, and all nature submits itself to the judgment of mortals, and refreshes us with a useful and delightful variety.” [Individuorum Transplantationes in Vegetabilibus usqueadeo sunt frequentes, uthinc nominis usarum receperint Philosophi. Ita cicurantur agrestes, mitigantur sapores, mutantur colores, maturitatis tempora accelerantur vel retardantur, totaque Natura arbitriis Mortalium se submittens, utili delectabilique varietate nos recreat.]
- 51.
Ibid., 139: “In the category of animals, the perfect, which are distinguished by the distinction of their sexes, admit transplantation with difficulty, and not all of them do this: those in which there is a great affinity between their seeds and nature, and that not unless the seeds have been mixed, such as wolves and dogs, horses and asses, partridges and chickens, etc. Animals of this sort have roots connected in nature’s great society.” [In genere Animalium perfecta quæ sexuum distinctione separata sunt difficulter Transplantationem admittunt: et hoc non omnia: solummodo illa in quibus magna est seminum et Naturæ affinitas, idque non nisi seminibus permixtis, ut lupi, canes: equi, asinæ: perdices, gallinæ, etc. Huiusmodi Animalia Radices habent magna Naturæ societate coniunctas.]
- 52.
Ibid., Chapter Nine: “De Mixtione, et huius comite Transplantatione.”
- 53.
Ibid., 109. “Generantur et Animalia quædam non ex proprio semine, sed ex seminibus diversorum Animalium confusis commixtisque, quæ tamen naturæ societate conspirantia, iisdem temporibus ad Generationem impetus habent, ut equus et asina mulum, canes et lupi, perdices et gallinæ: de quibus commodius in Transplantationum doctrina, quam mox subiungemus, agetur.”
- 54.
The logical antecedent is Paracelsus , but earlier and also just below this passage we see “him” expressing himself in Greek, suggesting that “he” is Hippocrates, whom Severinus occasionally quotes in Greek in the Idea medicinæ philosophicæ, and that Paracelsus is mentioned as an aside.
- 55.
Ibid.,154. “Insecta enim et his finitima frequentes admittunt Transplantationes, ac peregrina semina in suis tentoriis fovent. Ad hunc modum sæpe loquitur Paracelsus . Dicit enim ex eodem alimento canem caninam producere naturam, carnem, semen, radicem: hominem humanam, suem suillam, leonem leoninam, ob potestatem Mechanicorum spirituum, qui alimenta omnia suis signaturis ornare possunt.” Also 139–40: “In the class of the insects, and the rest of the animals in which no evident distinction of the sexes appears, transplantations occur more frequently and more readily. For their seminal principles, furnished with the knowledge of many species, admit equivocal generations.” [In genere Insectorum, coeterorumque Animalium, in quibus sexuum discrimina manifesta non apparent, frequentiores et faciliores contingunt Transplantationes. Seminalia enim eorum Principia, multarum specierum Scientia instructa, æquivocas Generationes admittunt.]
- 56.
Ibid., 45: “But, they will say, the four qualities carry out generations by means of mixing and meeting. Right; those things that are mixed and compounded produce generations and fruits. But we firmly assert that the elements, which are the present concern, are not mixed. Indeed it has been accepted on the authority of the philosophers that the elements are mixed. But yet when they examine the sources of generation , the development of seeds , and the ways of transplantation, they make use of the other elements, and they do not at all reach those first and greatest foundations of nature.” [At dicent, Mistione et congressu generationes absolvent. Recte: quæ miscentur et componuntur, generationes et fructus producunt: Elementa vero, de quibus nunc agimus, constanter asseveramus non misceri. Philosophorum quidem authoritate receptum est, Elementa misceri: at vero Generationum fontes, Seminum progressiones, et Transplantationum modos, dum scrutantur, aliorum Elementorum ministerio utuntur, prima illa et summa Naturæ fundamenta nequaquam attingunt.] Pagel 1967 noted Severinus ’ Aristotelian conception of epigenesis, where he used it to illuminate the intellectual background to Harvey ’s embryology.
- 57.
Severinus 1571, 143: “Indeed, gems are produced by specific transplantation, the prime and common root of the metals having been occupied by more powerful tinctures, and that happens when the individual characteristics of the metals have been received before. Thus, steel is transplanted from the roots of lead, sapphire from the roots of silver, emerald from the roots of copper, beryl from the roots of iron, etc.” [Gemmæ etenim specifica Transplantatione producuntur, validioribus Tincturis occupata prima communique Metallorum Radice idque receptis antea Individuis Metallorum signaturis. Ita ex radicibus plumbi transplantatur Adamas, ex radicibus Lunæ saphyrus, ex radicibus Veneris smaragdus, ex radice Martis Berillus, etc.]
- 58.
Ibid., 143: “Individuæ uero Transplantationes Metallorum, ubique conspiciuntur in Metallis, Marchasitis, Sulphuribus, Salibus, Thermis. Quinetiam artificiosæ Transplantationes Salium, ut aluminis, vitrioli, salis nitri, ammoniaci, Sulphurum, antimonialium, cupri, ferri, plumbi, stanni, naturæ mirabilem potestatem satis ostendunt. De quibus copiose et docte in multis locis disserit Paracelsus .”
- 59.
Redondi 1987, 203–226. The corpuscular hypothesis, like godless atomism, projected the idea that formal characteristics were essential manifestations of material identity and therefore did not support the idea that the Eucharistic host could actually be Christ while retaining the characteristics of the wafer. Thomas Aquinas’ interpretation of Aristotelian substantial form obviated this difficulty and became approved doctrine. Paracelsus was writing during the thick of the confessional controversies in German lands and was himself called in for questioning in connection with popular rebellion in 1525, so it is unlikely that he was unaware of the importance of terminology and ideas associated with transubstantiation, even if he may have been unaware of its relation to debates over the plurality of forms and suppression of corpuscular alchemy in thirteenth-century Europe.
- 60.
The surgeon Ambroise Paré devoted a monograph to monstrous births and other portents, Paré 1982 (original French edition 1573), in which he explained monstrous animal births as influenced by the relative strengths (and origins) of the parental seed as well as the effects of visual and celestial impressions, but Severinus ’ Ideal of Philosophical Medicine, as its title suggests, belongs to a more academic medical genre. The idea that characteristics of the child diversely resemble those of the mother or father, arising from the relative strengths of the parents’ seed, was commonplace in medieval Galenic medical theory, but Paré extends this to the mixing of the seed of different species to produce monsters (e.g. human crosses with farm animals), perhaps drawing on folk traditions that may also have inspired the Paracelsian ideas about seminal mixing.
- 61.
Severinus 1571, 219: “In quibus vero impuritates Mercuriales non sunt ita copiosæ, et salium robustior natura, ἄβαυσιν uel cariem expectant, ut arbores plurimæ fruticesque nonnullæ.” [In those [creatures] in which mercurial impurities are not so abundant, and the nature of the salts is stronger, they await “abausin” or decay, as do most trees and some fruits.]
- 62.
Ibid., 245. “Transplantatis seminibus novisque introductis, transplantantur quoque signaturæ, colores sapores, caliditates, frigiditates, etc. Ita discoloratæ, peregrinis saporibus inquinatæ, intemperatæ, segnes, stupidæ, immobiles redduntur partes, vel dissentaneis motibus et actionibus contaminantur. Suntque hæc omnia symptomata et fructus seminum Transplantationem causantium.”
- 63.
Ibid., 219: “In the root or mummy of animals, because they are nourished by the resolutions of vegetables and minerals, similar impurities are found, yet differing according to the nature of the fields [in which they lodge], for transplantation is made from the province of vegetable balsam into the animal republic, consequently they [animals] experience similar kinds of destruction and death.” [In radice vel Mumia animalium, quia Vegetabilibus et Mineralium resolutionibus nutriuntur, similes impuritates reperiuntur differentes tamen secundum agrorum naturam: facta est enim Transplantatio ex provincia Balsami vegetabilis, in Rempub.[licam] animalis: dissolutiones proinde et mortes similes experiuntur.]
- 64.
Ibid., 354. “… et ablatis symptomatum cruciatibus, amica quies naturæ reddebatur, videbaturque Universalis curatio corroboratione Balsami, mitigatione, et quieta Transplantatione, hostiles impuritates superare.”
- 65.
Ibid., 412: “Transplantation happens to generation by means of an intervening [interveniente] mixture, and it is common to the orders of all generations, whether the properties of the individual substance [naturæ] are altered by slighter tinctures, or with stronger [tinctures] the transplanted characteristics of species demonstrate signs of a new family.” [Transplantatio, Generationi, interveniente Mixtione accidit, communisque est Generationum omnium ordinibus, sive levioribus Tincturis, Individuæ naturæ proprietates immutentur, sive validioribus, Specierum signaturæ transplantatæ novæ familiæ insignia demonstrent.]
- 66.
Ibid., 220–21. “Quicquid enim in parentibus continetur, sive sanum sive morbidum, quod valida vitalique impressione, Balsamum et radicem humanæ naturæ afficere possit, Transplantatione hæreditarium evadit. Huiusmodi impressiones plane sunt astrales, incorporeæ, spirituales, invisibiles: sed efficaces seminalium Rationum naturas imitantes, Scientiæ et prædestinationum virtute procedentes, in quibus mole corporea non opus est ad corporum constitutiones.” Severinus ’ theory that transplantation can occur either phenotypically or at the heritable level implies that therapeutic transplantation can, in principle, effect a cure of hereditary disease.
- 67.
The distinction between seminal reason and impression thus seems to be instrumental rather than formal: the former is bound to the seed as a hylomorphic unit, while the latter is the transfer of the formal information or seminal programming (rationes) from agent to patient, where it induces its “impression” on the native seminal reason and thus alters it through transplantation.
- 68.
The term transplantation derives from the preposition “across” and the verb “to plant,” which itself derives from the Latin plantar, the bottom of the foot used to plant seeds or seedlings. It therefore carries with it a strong physical and spatial deep sense . In medieval use the term could be more abstract.
- 69.
On this matter see Hirai 2011.
- 70.
Severinus made occasional references to the phenomenological world as a theatrical production unfolding on a stage, but did not explicitly develop the analogy. For example, at the end of chapter four of Idea medicinæ philosophicæ (Severinus 1571, 39) Severinus explains how the rest of the book will unfold: “Third, we will establish the principles of all bodies, which are the vestments and dwellings of the seeds going forth onto this world stage. [Tertio, Principia constituemus omnium corporum, quæ sunt vestimenta et domicilia Seminum, in hanc mundanam scenam progredientium.]; This stage is the scene, literally, for coming to be and passing away (80–81): “There are two famous questions, which very much obscure the knowledge of natural things: where they have come from, and where they are proceeding to, those forms and species affecting us at defined intervals of time that carry out the functions of this world comedy, through the service of generations, transplantations, and mixtures.” [Duæ sunt famosæ dubitationes, quæ naturalium rerum scientiam vehementer obscurant: unde profectæ, quo pergant Formæ, Species, quæ nobiscum definitis temporum intervallis negotiaturæ, Generationum, Transplantationum et Mixtionum ministerio mundanæ Comoediæ lithurgiam peragunt.]
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Shackelford, J. (2016). Transplantation and Corpuscular Identity in Paracelsian Vital Philosophy. In: Distelzweig, P., Goldberg, B., Ragland, E. (eds) Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7353-9_10
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