Famous Impostors

Bram Stoker spent his last years collecting history's great frauds: pretenders to thrones, alchemists and witch-finders, the Tichborne Claimant — and the strange Cotswold legend that Queen Elizabeth was really a boy.

Paracelsus

4 cases in this part of Famous Impostors.

Paracelsus

I FEEL that I ought to begin this record with an apology to the manes of a great and fearless scholar, as earnest as he was honest, as…

Paracelsus: Theophrastus

Let us begin with the facts of his life. His name was Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, and he was the son of a doctor living in…

Paracelsus: Basel

His father moved in 1502 to Villach in Carinthia, where he practised medicine till his death in 1534. Theophrastus was a precocious boy…

Paracelsus: Augsburg

Then began a period of wandering which really lasted for the last dozen years of his life. This time was mainly one of learning in many…

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