Commentaries on the Six Books of Dioscorides on Medical Matter

[by their] names, and which the ancients have recorded that they performed. The cause of this difference is surely that we lack many noble and precious aromatics, which Mithridates, Attalus, Andromachus, Galen, and many others among the ancients mixed into their legitimate and most excellent antidotes: and which the emperors of that most flourishing age took care to have brought to Rome at immense cost, and with the greatest zeal and labor, from the regions of the Arabs, Ethiopians, Troglodytes, and other diverse nations. Where, however, it was permitted to no one, except the imperial physicians (as Galen admits), to prepare the true and legitimate theriac; unless someone by chance, through the favor of the powerful, had been gifted those distinguished aromatics by the Emperors. This is the chief reason why we should not wonder if the theriac of our use, and likewise the Mithridatic antidote, do not possess the same power as their names promise and the writings of the ancients attest.

But certainly it is clear that in this matter human life has been dealt with quite unfortunately, inasmuch as it has suffered the loss of the greatest remedies against poisons and other most grave discomforts to which it is subject and by which it is often afflicted. Wherefore in this our age, in which indeed almost all other things seem to be reduced to their pristine luster and restored to their integrity, that Supreme Pontiff, that most invincible Emperor, that most serene King, that magnanimous Prince, or that most wise Senate of any republic could be called glorious and truly most fortunate, who, imitating those Roman emperors and other most powerful kings in the natural endowments of his mind, would allow himself to be burdened by no expenses or labors, but would apply all study, all effort, and finally all his means, so that the long-lost aromatics, which we entirely lack for the preparation of antidotes, might be brought back to light. Truly, if any one of these were to do so, or if all were to strive to do the same, they would not only consult the welfare of their own lives and those of other mortals and deserve excellently of posterity, but they would moreover attain eternal fame therefrom; since posterity would perpetually attribute that benefit to its own authors with the highest praise.

Indeed, if that was not permitted to me, I have at least endeavored to perform with all my study and industry what I was able. For when I saw that men of this our age are involved in the same perils of life as those of old, and even in greater ones, yet that we lack those true and noble antidotes of the ancients because of those legitimate and distinguished simple medicines which are missing today, I wished to try whether compound medicines could be made from the legitimate ones we possess, which might compensate for their absence. I did this indeed with my great labor, and by long use and experience of things; but whether or not I have attained what I strove for, I do not know. Certainly I could confess this: that they have always seemed to me to provide the powers of theriac and the Mithridatic antidote far more successfully than those which are commonly prepared in this season under the same name. But I have not neglected to let the judgment in this, as in the rest, belong to others rather than to myself; since, with that spirit of deserving well which I have always maintained, in our commentaries on the sixth book of Dioscorides,

A decorative ink flourish or pen trial in the right margin.