Word: theophrastus
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...small, dark, knobby and wrinkled delicacy known as the truffle has tantalized palates and minds for thousands of years. The ancient Greek Theophrastus believed truffles were a product of thunder. In the Middle Ages they were considered evil things grown from the spit of witches. Later they came to be prized as an aphrodisiac, and Madame de Pompadour fed them to Louis XV. Napoleon, who was having difficulty fathering children, begat his only legitimate son after eating a truffled turkey. He promoted a lieutenant to colonel for having given him the recipe. In 1825, Brillat-Savarin, the savant of haute...
...blessing. Scholar Jaeger will stay in Cambridge, continue his great critical edition (ten volumes) of the works of Gregory of Nyssa,* the first such attempt since the French Revolution. Said Harvard Greek Professor John Finley in a farewell oration to Jaeger not long ago (following the remarks of Pupil Theophrastus to Master Aristotle): "Happy they with whom he lives, like Hesiod's people for whom the oak at its summit bears acorns, and in its middle branches honey...
...small ceremony at his home in Günsbach, France, 77-year-old Albert Schweitzer, physician, musician, philosopher and missionary, was presented with the first Paracelsus Medal (in honor of Philippus Paracelsus, 16th century alchemist and physician whose real name was Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim) awarded by the German Physicians' Congress for "outstanding services...
...Luther of Medicine," who violently attacked the authority of Galen, was Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim. He was born in Switzerland in 1493. (Last week in Manhattan the New York Academy of Medicine celebrated the 400th anniversary of Paracelsus' death.) A hotheaded youth, Paracelsus doffed his doctor's biretta for a slouch hat, wandered through Western Europe, treating workmen and peasants. Because he believed in experience rather than in Galen's laws, he was hounded by his fellow doctors. No university would employ him, no printer would publish his books. But his motley disciples followed...
Ever since primitive medicine men cast out devils with incantations and dances, music and medicine have kept up a nodding acquaintance. Asclepius, Greek god of healing, used three methods to treat the ill: drugs, surgery and "soft music." Ancient Greek Theophrastus used music to cure snakebite; Ancient Greek Pythagoras used it to treat insanity. The savage breast of many a high-strung potentate, from Saul to Hitler, has been soothed by music's charms...