[Valentin Rösswurm: on the social history of Paracelsism in the 16th century].

Abstract

The reactions awakened in his own day by the lithotomist Valentin Rösswurm were not many but varied. Up to now only the controversy about his Paracelsus connection has been mentioned in some studies on Paracelsian medicine in 16th-century England. Nothing has been known so far about the social background of the foreign doctor who came to England from the Continent. New documents found in various European archives enable us to reconstruct the career of another disciple of Paracelsus who earned his living by lithotomy and herniotomy, being one of the many itinerant surgeons who flocked European cities in the early modern period. The new evidence also does justice to a man accused of being a quack by his English critics but who was in fact an experienced and literate surgeon no better and no worse than the local healers with whom he competed for wealthy clients.