Paracelsus (AKA Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim) was a physician, alchemist and philosopher in the early 16 th century.
He is considered to be the first chemist and toxicologist. His quote, "The dose makes the poison" is well known.
He thought that all medical practitioners should understand chemical principles and taught such principles to his medical students.
The medical establishment at the time did not fully agree with the need for understanding chemical principles, but chemistry prevailed and has been
a key part of medical student's education since that time.
Without understanding basic organic chemistry, it is not possible to fully understand biochemistry. I don't think that anyone would say that biochemistry is
not important for medical education. One can argue that with the proliferation of effective medications, a general practitioner only needs to understand
what medicine may alleviate what condition to be able to prescribe that medication and how it functions or is made is not important. However, there are
often cases where a patient has an adverse reaction and an understanding of how the drug works at the biochemical level may help to understand the
problem that the patient is having.
I have a Ph.D. in physical chemistry which takes an understanding of calculus and quantum mechanics.
I thought that some of the undergraduate organic chemistry classes were hard due to all of the named reactions and one
had to remember the names to answer problems on exams. Organic chemists like to refer to reactions by the discoverers name
rather than what it does. Memorization of names is hard for me which is why I found organic chemistry classes difficult.