ABSTRACT
With the beginning of the seventeenth century, a new relation developed between man and nature as the divine will was replaced by the human mind. The point of view which made disease a consequence of sin gave way to the Hellenic idea, that disease is a lack of harmony which nature should cure. Disease processes were explained in terms of localized pathological anatomy, rather than as being diffused throughout the system. Van Helmont ridiculed the "chemical anatomy" of urine, but utilized the gravimetric idea in the analysis and recommended determination of specific gravity. Chemistry was elevated to a new level of importance in the sixteenth century by Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, the controversial Swiss physician, oculist, astrologer, and alchemist. Calling himself Paracelsus, he claimed parity with the great Roman compiler of medical information, Aulus Cornelius Celsus, who lived in the first century of the era.
