Philippus Paracelsus 1493-1541 Switzerland “Alchemists” have unfortunately come to be trivialized as people on a Quixotic quest to make base metals into gold. Paracelsus was a true alchemist—a brilliant medieval physician and chemist who combined breakthrough scientific discoveries with careful observation and traditional folk wisdom to, literally, bring medicine out of the “dark ages” and lay the foundation for both traditional and “complementary” modern healthcare. “Oh…if I could but transform the wisdom of the dead into the understanding of the living that, that would be alchemy.”