Commentaries on the Six Books of Dioscorides on Medical Matter

...as well as one renowned for experience, who most honorably professes both the structure of the human body and materia medica at Padua; no less than Andrés de Laguna of Segovia, a most excellent physician; furthermore, Bartolomeo Maranta of Apulia, a physician of the highest erudition; and also Ulisse Aldrovandi of Bologna, a physician of most noble family, proven learning, and great promise. To all of whom I understand myself to be the more indebted, because out of their own kindness and liberality alone, they have treated me—whom they have never known nor seen—with love and service; unless perhaps their benevolence toward us arose from the fact that they had already conceived some opinion of us from our Italian commentaries. Nor were there lacking those joined to us by friendship and kinship, by whose zeal and diligence it was permitted to me, traveling through various places at this time in no other way, to obtain many plants and to publish drawings of them.

But especially in this matter, Giovanni Odorico Melchiori of Trent, a physician of distinguished erudition and a young man of great promise, who has always held me in the place of a father, has devoted his tireless labor for us. And he, on account of his remarkable erudition, was honorifically admitted as physician by the Most Serene Queen of Bohemia for her own benefit and that of her court. Truly, he took care that many uncommon plants were brought to us, both from Padua and from Venice. Giorgio Liberale also assisted us in a marvelous manner, a young man most skilled in the art of painting, who, while he was assiduously sketching the images of plants and animals, spared indeed no labor or diligence.

There is, moreover, a man of the highest probity and integrity of life, Francesco Parthinus of Rovereto, concerning whose extraordinary learning and singular experience in medical matters there is such a high opinion among many Princes of this age, that some of them—especially the Cardinals of Trent and Augsburg, for the latter of whom he acted as personal physician for some years—considered it a great honor to themselves that they decorated such a man with most ample rewards and various honors. From this it later came about that he has now been deservedly elevated to the position of Physician to the Most Serene King of Bohemia. There is also Girolamo Donzellini of Brescia, a most celebrated physician in both languages, in erudition, and in the highest judgment; who indeed, by assisting these labors of ours in very many ways, has been a greatest honor to us.

I could indeed have concealed all these things and claimed the entire praise for myself alone; but let all desire for vainglory be far away. For it is a gracious thing (as Pliny skillfully says in his letter to Vespasian) and full of noble modesty, to acknowledge those through whom we have made progress. Furthermore, since Dioscorides not only handed down in five books the entire materia medica, which is comprised of plants, animals, and minerals, but also wove onto these a sixth book, in which he discoursed for the use of the mortal race concerning antidotes, by which all poisons are warded off and the bites and stings of all venomous animals are cured, we have therefore followed him and written commentaries on this book as well, into which we have gathered many things that we hope will be of benefit to the lives of men. For besides the fact that not only the whole human race, but especially kings and princes, lie open to the snares of wicked poisoners, there are not...