De metallorum ortu & causis

Consequently, some turn out as soap-makers, others as Physicians: hence from these very people a proverb was born, An Alchemist is either a soap-maker or a Physician. But physicians of this sort should be so called not from healing, but by antiphrasim antiphrasis, the use of a word to mean its opposite, because they heal no one by their art. Today they are called Tartarean or Paracelsian, because they are disciples of Philippus Theophrastus Paracelsus Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus (1493–1541), a Swiss physician and alchemist who rejected traditional Galenic medicine.. He, however, was the first author of that new medicine by which deplorable Alchemists exist as physicians, or, to speak more truly, he was the devil of it. For many testify, and especially Suavius the Frenchman Suavius Gallus refers to Jacques Gohory (1520–1576), a French scholar who wrote under the name Leo Suavius. and Thomas Erastus, that this Paracelsus was an impious and most depraved man. Erastus, a pious man and worthy of trust, who most accurately examined his deceptions and impieties, also adds that he was a magum wizard or magician, and was accustomed to call the devil his companion. Furthermore, that wicked man clearly reveals his horrendous impiety in the book titled On the Womb original: "libro de matrice", where he most shamefully