Paracelsus, scientific research and supportive care--500 years after!

The 500th anniversary of the birth of the famous Swiss physician and philosopher, Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim--called Paracelsus, in the fall of 1993 provides an excellent opportunity to review some of his thoughts and teachings and to reflect upon their timeless meaning for present-day medical research and patient care, especially in the sometimes controversial field of supportive care in oncology. Most probably Paracelsus' call for the abandonment of the encrusted dogmatic Galenism and his fight for a new spirit of experimental investigation by sound empirical studies was well ahead of his time in the early Renaissance. However, his concept of diseases as specific entities, relating to specific anatomical sites and possessing distinct and reproducible natural courses, was nearly prophetic, while still leaving room enough for individual variations. His views are somehow illustrative of modern psychosomatic medicine and comprehensive "holistic" supportive and palliative care, realized only after a very long "doctor's delay" at the close of the twentieth century.