Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus in Frankenstein

Another question you might have in your reading of FRANKENSTEIN is who the heck are Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus and why should we care? These were men who straddled the divide between rigorous scientific thought and superstition - men whose worlds of inquiry would attract a young restless and ambitious  mind like Frankenstein's, but would be discounted by men of serious scientific inquiry. 

Agrippa was a fourteenth century German astrologer whose scientific inquiries devolved into occult musings on the Kabbalah (a school or tradition in Judaism which sought to divine mystical truths in the Old Testament  through ciphers and numerical codes) and the magical properties of plants, minerals and crystals, and of course, astrology. After the Age of Reason (the 1700's), people of a more scientific mind frowned on the occult and mystical bent of his thinking.

Albertus Magnus was a 13th Century German priest/scholar who sought to bridge the gap between religious thought and scientific inquiry. He was the first to wed Aristotelian philosophy with Christian philosophy and was renown for his encyclopedic knowledge of all things pertaining to natural sciences and philosophy. There was little or no barrier between the occult and the sciences and like many intellectuals of the time (the time lasting until the "Age of Reason" - the 18th Century, five centuries later) Albertus Magnus was as knowledgeable in astrology and alchemy as he was in astronomy and chemistry. (He was the first to isolate the compound arsenic.) The renown of his genius aroused jealousy and there were those who accused him of black magic and of even creating a speaking automata (an animated creature resembling a human - much like Prometheus). Do you think Mary Shelley might have had a reason for including Albertus Magnus in this group?

Paracelsus was a 16th Century physician-astrologer who graduated with a bacclaurate degree in medicine from the University of Vienna at the age of 17. He made significant contributions to toxology when he discovered that the dose of a substance is as important as the substance itself. For example, a drug (like aspirin) in small amounts may be beneficial, but in large amounts may be lethal. Although he eschewed most superstitions, Paracelsus, like many of the physicians of the time, was a serious astrologer and used his astrological knowledge in the treatment of his patients. Paracelsus wrote many books on the role of astrology in medical treatments and created astrological talismans based on the zodiac signs of his patients to aide in their treatments.