From the book
Nine Books on the Nature of Things
Attributed to Paracelsus · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Meaning
The gallows and wheel locate the alleged growth of hair and nails in the body of an executed wrongdoer. The setting explains why observers might read the phenomenon as a sign of innocence and why the speaker rejects that interpretation. The passage substitutes a proposed natural cause for a moral omen. Naming the punitive objects preserves this argumentative situation rather than reducing the paragraph to a detached statement about corpses.
Places to read
- Book 2 · Growth · Passage 2Latin“in patibulo aut rota”