Background
Thomas Erastus was born on September 7, 1524, in Baden, Switzerland, the son of poor parents.
philosopher physician theologian
Thomas Erastus was born on September 7, 1524, in Baden, Switzerland, the son of poor parents.
Erastus studied theology and philosophy at Basel from 1540 to 1544 and medicine at Bologna and Padua from 1544 to 1555, receiving the Doctor of Medicine degree in 1552.
Erastus was invited in 1557 by the elector Otto Heinrich of the Palatinate to be professor of therapeutics in the new faculty of medicine at the University of Heidelberg. There he quickly achieved a favourable reputation as a physician and a teacher. In the same year he was physician to Count William of Henneberg at Meiningen. His anti-Calvinist attitude led to his fall from the favor of Frederick III. In 1580, therefore, he left Heidelberg for Basel, where he became professor of theology and moral philosophy.
Erastus argued that the sins committed by Christians should be punished by the State, and that the Church should not withhold Sacraments as a form of punishment.
Erastus is remembered chiefly as an inexorable and abusive critic of astrology, natural magic, and particularly of Paracelsus and iatrochemistry. He condemned such superstitious practices as the curative use of human blood and parts of corpses and of amulets in the cure of epilepsy, but he firmly believed in Satan, demons, and witches - accusing the witches, against the claims of their defenders (Wierus and others) that they were victims of drug-induced hallucinations, of true cohabitation with the devil. A successful physician with great experience in the use of watering places (Bad Kissingen), he strictly adhered to traditional humoralism and ancient medical practice but nevertheless criticized Galen.
Erastus laced his rational arguments heavily with theological dogma and polemics, yet on occasion he made sound observations, such as tracing vitriol and alum in mineral water with oak gall water. Opposing traditional ideas about the brain, he insisted that what mattered was not its substance but its function and its production of impulses (“spirits”). Erastus also demolished the Galenic theory that epilepsy was caused by obstruction of pathways by viscid mucus, since such a theory could not explain why sensation was disturbed but motility was not.
No two events in nature, Erastus contended, are equal in cause and effect: hence the futility of forecasting. According to him, heaven acts in conformity with a general plan and does not interfere with the course of events that are specific for the individual object. For example, it supplies heat and moisture in spontaneous generation, but the process is due entirely to the specific disposition of certain parts of matter. Attempts at astrological divination work through the invocation of demons and therefore are damnable heresy. Furthermore, Erastus said, comets do not foretell evil events, such as wars, pestilence, and the deaths of kings; they are merely terrestrial exhalations and, as such, produce drought and heat - factors not conducive to the outbreak of epidemics.
Erastus’ criticism of Paracelsus was fivefold. First, he criticized Paracelsus’ denial of the existence and universal significance of the elements and humors established in ancient science and medicine and their replacement with the three principles, salt, sulfur, and mercury; these had never been isolated from any object by heat or chemical manipulation. Solidity, inflammability, and volatility were not caused by the presence of any of the three Paracelsian principles but by the proportions in which the four elements of the ancients (air, water, fire, earth) were “mixed” in an object. It was the special mixture of water and subtle earth particles that made mercury prone to go up in smoke. Sulfur was inflammable because of the fire and warm air it contained. Without this air, sulfur would become inert and lose its “sulfurousness.” The solidity of salt showed its kinship with the earth.
Second, Erastus angrily repudiated the significance attributed by Paracelsus to the power of imagination and the conversion of something spiritual into matter; this he regarded as the main part of the natural magic - the “Neoplatonic fallacy” - practiced by Paracelsus. The concepts of microcosm and quintessence were sheer nonsense; how could the human body contain the virtues and materials of all parts of the outside world? Who could show that bread already and actually contains human blood instead of being converted into it when consumed?
Third, disease, according to Paracelsus, was not the disturbance of humoral balance in an individual man (as the ancients rightly taught); man was merely the passive recipient of an outside agent that, like a parasite, takes possession and inflicts, its own schedule of life on the organism, thereby consuming it. In this, Erastus said, Paracelsus confused disease with its cause and disregarded the functions of organs, which alone decide the character of a disease.
Fourth, the chemical and notably the metallic (mainly mercury) remedies recommended by Paracelsus were nonassimilable poisons. No therapy could work except through the humors. Therefore, potable gold was a magician’s swindle.
Fifth, said Erastus, Paracelsus was an ignorant man, a “grunting swine” who, driven by ambition and vanity, replaced sane teaching with insane delusion, the comprehensible with the incomprehensible, truth with falsehood, and salubrious medicine with pestilential poison. His “cures” were at best temporary and, as a rule, injurious. Although not devoid of some knowledge of chemistry, he was largely a magus informed by the devil and evil spirits.
While in Bologna Erastus married Isotta a Canonici; they had no children.