Father Of Toxicology Quotes

Paracelsus (1493–1541), the founder of toxicology and one of the three fathers of modern Western medicine (along with Hippocrates and Galen), wrote, ‘Fasting is the greatest remedy—the physician within.’ Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), one of America’s founding fathers and renowned for wide knowledge, once wrote of fasting, ‘The best of all medicines is resting and fasting.

The spirit is the master; imagination the tool, and the body the plastic material…. The power of the imagination is a great factor in medicine. It may produce diseases in man and in animals, and it may cure them. Ills of the body may be cured by physical remedies or by the power of the spirit acting through the Soul.” —Paracelsus, the Father of Toxicology

The church of medicine has its own saintly patrons, the most prominent being Hypocrites who founded a new religion and its sacred oath and originated a new era of humanity. Then comes Paracelsus, the father of toxicology, who promoted herbal medicine, iatrochemistry and pharmacognosy. Next, Pasteur, the father of vaccines, who, like Moses, shepherded humanity away from the captivity of infectious diseases, led it towards the promised land of health and provided it with the tools for its salvation 8 (Clerc 2004: 7). There is Freud who founded a new sect within medicine— psychoanalysis (Cioffi 1998 [2010]; Rieff 1973) while Watson and Crick revealed to humanity the sacred mystery of life. Among these saints there are also martyrs, like the promoter of jogging Jim Fixx, who died of heart attack while running, or Rosalind Franklin, who died of cancer caused by her exposure to X-ray radiation.