ABSTRACT
The European Renaissance gave rise to powerful new technologies and to new ways of investigating the phenomenal world. Ancient paradigms that had shaped the intellectual life of Europe for centuries were challenged by knowledge that told a new story about the nature of life and the universe. The meticulous attention to detail that characterised the approach of the early Hippocratic physicians was new to both medicine and the study of natural phenomena. University training in medicine only became established in the early centuries of the second millennium. Human dissection was not undertaken at Salerno due to the influence of Islamic teachers and an ecclesiastical aversion to interference with corpses. Paracelsus was born Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim in 1493, one year after Columbus discovered the new world. Renaissance alchemists had brought to a fine art the various methods of separating and purifying both the volatile and fixed substances within the plant, animal and mineral kingdoms.
