Paracelsus Article

What does Paracelsus’s name mean?

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Paracelsus was the byname of the German-Swiss physician Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. About 1516 he began using the name “para-Celsus” (meaning above or beyond Celsus). His new name reflected the fact that he regarded himself as even greater than Aulus Cornelius Celsus, a renowned 1st-century Roman medical writer.