I.  4 Humour Theory (Galen)
 

Microcosm:				Macrocosm:
	dry	moist			dry	moist
hot	Yellow Bile	Blood		hot	Fire	Air
cold	Black Bile	Phlegm		cold	Earth	Water

Summer (hot/dry) - Yellow Bile
Winter (cold/moist) - Phlegm
Fall (cold/dry) - Black Bile
Spring (hot/moist) - Blood

1.  In a healthy body, the 4 humours are balanced and in harmony.  Disease arises from an imbalance in the humours.  The task of the physician is to restore harmony.  There is only one type of disease:  "distemper", and it is a global internal state of the individual.

2.  Treatment:  To restore humourial balance in the individual, one employs a treatment of opposites.  For instance, an overabundance of phlegm is treated by administering substances associated with its elemental opposite, yellow bile.  Such treatment takes the physical form of herbal remedies or poultices of crushed stones.  Also of limited efficacy are amulets that are worn by the patient.  The medicinal power of such amulets rests in their occult properties, which are hidden properties of their whole substances (what come to be known as their substantial forms).

3.  General Galenic world view:  Aristotelian, rational.*
 

II.  Ontological Theory (Paracelsus)

1.  Disease is due to "rogue" astra that enter the body; ie, it is due to external foreign agents.  In particular, a disease is said to grow in the body in the same way fruit grows on a tree, or minerals grow in a mine.  Hence a disease is a physical localized object.  The task of the physician is to erradicate its presence from the body.  Furthermore, there are as many different types of disease as there are possible rogue astra.

2.  Treatment:  Paracelsian medicine treats Like with Like.  The growth of any particular disease in the body is governed primarily by one of the tria prima (the one that is primarily associated with the rogue astrum responsible for the disease).  It is treated with substances employing the same principle.  Such substances usually take the physical form of chemicals (metals and minerals) in which the principle is manifest (mercury, arsenic, and antimony were popular).

Iatrochemistry:  treatment of disease with chemical substances

3.  General Paracelsian world view:  Neoplatonic/Hermetic, empirical

Note one consequence of Neoplatonic basis:  Paracelsians objected to the Galenic practice of blood-letting (required for diseases associated with an overabundance of Blood).  Paracelsians postulated that the spiritus mundi is taken into the lungs and formed into arterial blood (Debus pg. 29).  Draining blood from a patient would thus be draining the life-essence from the patient.