Paracelsus and Goethe: founding fathers of environmental health.

The writings of Paracelsus and Goethe were separated by nearly three centuries and were published long before public health was a recognized profession, yet they could hardly be more relevant to environmental health problems today. In his great dramatic poemFaust, 1832, Goethe (1) confronts the promises and pitfalls of the Industrial Revolution and the economic growth that it generated. As finance minister at the Court of Weimar he was well placed to comment on these developments, and his insights remain astonishingly relevant. As we ponder whether the new riches that we are amassing in some parts of the world are real or illusory, it is worth taking a closer look at howGoethe dramatizes this question (2, 3). Goethe shows how, through a combination of economic activity and technological progress, the subjugation of nature and natural forces is effected. In his poem, a section of coastline was enclosed by a dyke and transformed into a garden ‘‘like an Eden’’. It seems miraculous, a feat of alchemy: what had been economically worthless became something valuable. Faust, representing modern man, carries out this massive project of economic progress, but Goethe also shows the existing and potential dangers associated with it. Human progress entails curbing nature by constructing an artificial world of cities, industry, transport, and intensified agriculture, symbolized in Faust by land reclamation. Goethe shows us that such interference in the natural environment may have unforeseen consequences because nature reacts according to its own laws, which humans can never entirely predict. Unanticipated consequences may wipe out, wholly or in part, the successes gained by earlier interventions or cast retrospective doubt upon them. Goethe draws attention to three dangers. First, environmental damage may ensue, exemplified by a ‘‘foul morass’’ in the reclaimed land because there is no outflow for the stinking water. This is a consequence of the shortsighted construction of the dyke, which led to the formation of algae and the silting up of drainage channels. As attempts are made to correct these mistakes, new ones are made, requiring further corrections. Thus Faust’s megalomanic project is never-ending. Secondly, to realize his plans, Faust needsmore and more land. So he drives out the established population — the old couple, Baucis and Philemon — from the dunes above the newly embanked land. The beauty of the natural landscape, which had evolved and been carefully maintained over centuries to become everything we associate with the idea of ‘‘home’’, is now ruined. Thirdly, novel risks arise that could completely destroy Faust’s entire project. For example, the dyke that he sets against the might of the ocean could break. Faust knows this, but he believes that if all available forces are coordinated, all possible dangers can be overcome (Part II, Act V): Howe’er may rage the angry baffled tide, Striving to sap, to force an entrance, each And all rush swiftly to close up the breach.