Overview: Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541), commonly called Paracelsus, was both one of the most original medical thinkers of the sixteenth century and was the man who made opium (as laudanum), arsenic, copper sulphate, iron, lead, mercury, potassium sulphate, and sulphur part of the pharmacopoeia. A man of many parts, but a pioneer chemist, Paracelsus can be regarded as the originator of a body of work which was the precursor of chemical pharmacology and therapeutics. To no small extent he stands, therefore, as a father figure of the modern pharmaceutical industry. To
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