Bad Ragaz, Switzerland/badragaz501
Previous | Home | NextParacelsus was always striving to understand the essence of materials -- but he was too ahead of his time to imagine the nature of the true elements. Paracelsus' asserted that elements were not the Aristotelian agents of fire, water, earth, and air. Instead he proposed three chemical substances, or principles, which combined in various proportions to constitute all materials and give them their ultimate outward properties — mercury, sulfur, and salt. This list may sound primitive to modern chemists, but it must be remembered that this was 2½ centuries before Lavoisier's Traité.
