THEO - the Paracelsus Database

About THEO

As part of a digitization project, the searchable database THEO aims to make available the works of the physician, natural philosopher and radical theologian Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim (1493-1541), called Paracelsus. The texts are based on the editions of Johannes Huser (Basel 1589-1591, Strassbourg 1605) and Karl Sudhoff (Munich 1922-1933). In a later phase the theological works of Paracelsus and the complete works of Jakob Boehme will probably also be included. Once completed, THEO will be an indispensable tool for every researcher in the fields of German language and literature studies and especially Paracelsus studies.

The THEO database is a joint project of Didier Kahn (Centre d’étude de la langue et des littératures françaises CELLF, Sorbonne University, Paris, and Centre national de la recherche scientifique CNRS, France) and Urs Leo Gantenbein (Zurich Paracelsus Project, University of Zurich, Switzerland). In the last years Gantenbein had developed an OCR software with the same name THEO, which was mainly designed for the digitization of the Sudhoff Edition. Kahn then brought in WordPro from Pondicherry, India, a company specializing in the digitization of ancient texts. This permitted to efficiently digitize the historically and philologically more valuable Huser Edition. Finally, Gantenbein developed the THEO web page to enable comprehensive browse and search options.

We would like to thank our sponsors, the Theophrastus Stiftung, Mühltal, Germany, who made possible the digitization through WordPro, and the medica Laboratorien Dr. Franz Käppeli AG, Zurich, who also significantly support the activities of the Zurich Paracelsus Project.

This homepage is continuously updated according to the current state of digitization. Presently the following volumes are available online:
Huser Edition (HE, 1589-1591), vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5A, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10A, 10F (complete)
Huser Edition, Surgical Writings (1605): HC, HCA (Appendix)
Sudhoff Edition (SE, 1922-1933), vols. 1, 6, 7, 10, 12
Additional works in Sudhoff which are not contained in Huser: SA Karl Sudhoff, Bibliographia Paracelsica (1894) : SBP Karl Sudhoff, Paracelsus-Handschriften (1899): SH

Last updated on 10 May 2022

Help

This homepage uses modern web techniques like HTML5, jQuery, jQuery UI and elements of w3schools.com. Please update your browser and do not block JAVASCRIPT in order to get the full functionality.

Browse:
Select a volume to get its contents. By clicking on an item of the contents the first page of the corresponding paragraph will be shown.

Search & Browse:
Enter one or more search terms in the Input field and click the Search button or press the Enter key. The search terms may be truncated, e.g. 'alchim' for 'alchimia' or 'alchimist'.
By default a fuzzy query is performed. For example, the search term 'gold' also returns the results for 'golt', 'goldt'.
If the last letter of the search term is '$' (e.g. 'gold$'), intermediate results such as 'Flammgoldt' are also obtained.
An exact match with the search term is achieved by setting the last letter to '#' (e.g. 'hund#').
By clicking on one of the results, the whole corresponding page will appear on the opposite side.
To jump to a specific page, enter e.g. 'HE5,234' in the input field and click on the first result.
The search is reset by double-clicking the Input field or pressing the Clear button.

Restricted Search:
The search can be restricted to specific volumes by adding '@' :
'gold @HE8' or 'gold @he8' : searching for 'gold' in Huser vol. 8
'gold @H' or 'gold @h' : searching in all Huser volumes HE including HC and HCA
'mumia @hc' : searching for 'mumia' in the surgical writings HC and HCA
'mumia @sa' : searching for 'mumia' in the additional writings of Sudhoff SA
'mumia @SE10' : searching for 'mumia' in Sudhoff vol. 10
'gold silber @SBP' or 'gold silver @sbp' : searching for gold and silver in Sudhoff's Bibliographia Paracelsica

Search Only:
Here the same search functionality exists as with 'Search & Browse' with the difference that the results are displayed with a larger overview. This makes it easier to search in a large number of results.

Error Reporting:
The 'Error Report' button allows to easily report obvious transcription errors on the fly.

Future implementations:
In the current state of development results can only be downloaded with 'copy and paste'.

Abbreviations:
BP: Karl Sudhoff, Bibliographia Paracelsica (Berlin 1894), with number of entry
        BP1: Vom Holtz Guaiaco gründlicher heylung (Nuremberg 1529)
        BP14: Grosse wund artzney (Ulm 1536)
        BP15: Der grossenn Wundartzney, das Erst Buch (Augsburg 1536)
        BP16: Der grossenn wundartzney, Das ander Buch (Augsburg 1536)
HC, HCA: Paracelsus, Chirurgische Bücher und Schrifften, ed. Johannes Huser (Strasbourg 1605) [= BP267]