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Podcast: Stuff You Missed in History Class
Episode: Paracelsus and the Doctrine of Signatures
Description: 16th-century Swiss physician Paracelsus was frustrated with established medical practice and academia and he was sometimes on the lam because of his beliefs. He wrote at length about the idea that items in the natural world carried “signatures” in their appearance that could tell you visually how they could be used medicinally. Research: Bennett, B.C. Doctrine of Signatures: An explanation of medicinal plant discovery or Dissemination of knowledge?. Econ Bot 61, 246–255 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1663/0013-0001(2007)61[246:DOSAEO]2.0.CO;2 Dafni, Amots, and E. Lev. “The Doctrine of Signatures in Present-Day Israel.” Economic Botany, vol. 56, no. 4, 2002, pp. 328–34. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/st...