His name, or at any rate the name by which he was known, was Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim.

His father in alchemy, Trimethius, Abbot of Spannheim and then of Wurzburg, who was a theologian, a poet, an astronomer, and a necromancer, named him _Paracelsus_; this name is taken by some to be a kind of Graeco-Latin paraphrase of von Hohenheim (of high lineage), and to mean "belonging to a lofty place"; others say it signifies "greater than Celsus," who was a celebrated Latin writer on medicine of the 1st century.
Paracelsus studied at the University of Basle; but, getting into trouble with the authorities, he left the university, and for some years wandered over Europe, supporting himself, according to one account, by "psalm-singing, astrological productions, chiromantic soothsaying, and, it has been said, by necromantic practices." He may have got as far as Constantinople; as a rumour floated about that he received the Stone of Wisdom from an adept in that city.

He returned to Basle, and in 1527 delivered lectures with the sanction of the Rector of the university.

He made enemies of the physicians by abusing their custom of seeking knowledge only from ancient writers and not from nature; he annoyed the apothecaries by calling their tinctures, decoctions, and extracts, mere _soup-messes_; and he roused the ire of all learned people by delivering his lectures in German.

He was attacked publicly and also anonymously.