[The admirable effects of panaceas: ideas between antiquity and early modern times]

Panaceas, i. e. medicines that can cure many or almost all diseases, were used throughout the history from antiquity until modern times. The paper focuses on ideas developed to explain the admirable actions of these medicines. In antiquity such actions seem to be related to the large number of ingredients as well as to the presence of materials connected to potent poisons (e. g. viper flesh). Later, with the advent of alchemy, the alchemical preparation is regarded to produce medicines with such properties, the most pregnant example being lapis philosophorum. Such explanations are underpinned by the correspondences with higher astral influences as espoused by Paracelsus, as well as by van Helmont's idea that both disease and cure depend exclusively on the state of the 'spirit of life'. At the same time Galenic-like ideas survive, in the sense that panaceas are something like universal purifiers. Besides curing diseases panaceas were used to ensure long living, permanent health as well as for achieving rejuvenation. In this respect, they show an affinity to the so-called 'healing power of nature'.