Epistle

Since several of the Roman emperors had rightly judged—as Galen Claudius Galenus (129–c. 216 AD), a prominent Greek physician and philosopher in the Roman Empire testifies in the first book of On Antidotes—that although they were greatly occupied in administering the republic and in governing and protecting the provinces, they were nevertheless possessed by a no small zeal for cultivating and illustrating the study of herbs original: "rei herbariae". Indeed, so that they might obtain legitimate plants and take possession of true aromatics, they supported herbalists at great expense in many distant regions and bestowed gifts upon them. They did this, moreover, with the conviction that they would gain no less glory than utility from it, because they also sought to earn the gratitude of all mortals through such a benefit. Truly, they were led by the memorable example of their ancestors, who were accustomed not only to carry in triumphs the spoils of kings whom they had conquered in war (dedicated as trophies) and to lead the conquered kings themselves before them, but also to carry with great honor foreign plants and noble aromatics which possessed rare and excellent qualities. Nor did those men think they had attained less praise and glory from those plants—which they afterwards diligently cultivated in their own gardens—and likewise from the aromatics which they stored among their other precious things for their own and others' benefit, than from the trophies, statues, and arches, all of which the Senate and the Roman people saw to it were erected in perpetual memory of their achievements and in gratitude to those who had shown themselves worthy of such praise.

Great honor was also held among the Romans for those who wrote about the history and powers of plants and who became famous in this faculty. It is a sufficiently manifest proof that, after Carthage was conquered, they gave away all the libraries they found to various kings and princes, except for thirty-two volumes on the study of herbs and agriculture alone, written by Mago the Carthaginian Mago was a famous Carthaginian writer whose agricultural manual was highly prized by the Romans, which they brought to Rome and ordered to be translated into the Latin language. Indeed, that Mago, skilled in the study of herbs and agriculture, alone entered into such great favor with the Romans.

But truly, although medical matter original: "medica materia"; refers to the study of substances used in healing was celebrated in all ages past, and was not only handled but even refined, it nevertheless happened—whether by the overthrow of kingdoms, or by seditions and wars (both civil and foreign), or by the cruelty of raging pestilence, or by the neglect of the physicians who preceded us—that so excellent and divine a faculty lay obsolete, unattempted, and uncultivated in our ancestors' age. This went so far that very few physicians could be found who recognized almost any plants other than garden vegetables, the use of which is frequent in food.

When this situation was noticed, several most famous men of our age and most diligent investigators of medical matters, highly skilled in the Latin and Greek languages—Hermolaus Barbarus, Nicolaus Leonicenus, Giovanni Manardo, Jean Ruel, Marcello Virgilio, Leonhart Fuchs (a physician of famous erudition among the Germans), Antonio Musa (celebrated for learning in the Academy of Ferrara), Otto Brunfels, Jacques Dubois, Luigi Mundella, and others—exerted strenuous effort so that, having shaken off the fog of the previous century, they might rescue medical matter from the darkness and restore it to its own light. Following these men with the greatest zeal and industry I could muster, I have noticed for many years now in all the apothecaries of Italy, both by the ointment-sellers themselves and especially by physicians ignorant of this faculty, how...