ENCOMIUM

C ...[it is said] among other things: This part of medicine is as necessary as it is certainly the most ancient, and for this reason, it was first celebrated and illustrated. If indeed it is true that the Ancients cured the flaws of their bodies with herbs and roots; for even then, the human race in its beginnings did not easily entrust itself to the iron The "iron" refers to surgical tools/the knife.. And again, near the end: We shall take care to place simples Medicines made from a single natural ingredient, usually a plant. first. For sometimes these are more effective than medicines composed of many ingredients.

I willingly and gladly pass over many things, lest my speech breed boredom and I be forced to omit others: among whom is Hesiod, both Poet and Physician, whom nothing grieves so much as that men are ignorant of how much good is in the mallow and the asphodel, as he says:

Hesiod

Fools, they do not even know how much more the half is than the whole,
nor how much benefit there is in the mallow and the asphodel.
For the gods keep the means of life hidden from men.
original Greek: "νήπιοι οὐδ’ ἴασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ἥμισυ παντός / οὐδ’ ὅσον μαλάχῃ τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλῳ μέγ’ ὄνειαρ / κρύψαντες γὰρ ἔχουσι θεοὶ βίον ἀνθρώποισι ."

HomerHomer, moreover, when he is given the chance to wander into the subject of herbs—good Gods!—how charmingly he paints them, how much he philosophizes: namely when he describes Calypso’s gardens, or the gardens of Alcinous; when he celebrates his Moly A magical herb in the Odyssey used to protect against sorcery. and Nepenthe A legendary drug used to banish sorrow., the Cedar, the Lotus, and other plants of that kind. Thus, a certain man said truly of him that that blind man "saw everything." Yet, why do I mention those men so devotedly, whom our adversaries turn up their noses at, or rather, condemn and treat as worthless as if they were obsolete? For whatever they either do not understand, or does not immediately smell of profit, they consider obsolete or merely "grammar," but by no means medicine. Let them hear, then, their own Arnoldus, a man indeed of a "barbarous" age Arnold of Villanova (c. 1240–1311). The author calls his age "barbarous" because it lacked the refined Latin style of the Renaissance., but clearly of no obscure reputation in his own century.

Arnoldus

D This is also his aphorism, and a certain principle of the art: that when simples are available, it is a deception if one relies on compounds.

Avicenna And Avicenna, in Book 2, Chapter 2, says: "Simple medicines have universal operations and particular operations." I do not wish to pursue these points with many words. Truly, I did not want the judgment to depend on witnesses alone; for that belongs to orators rather than a man who values truth itself. But since they flee to a multitude of witnesses—namely their Avicennas, Rhazes, and Serapions Influential Persian and Arabic physicians whose works dominated European medicine for centuries.—to strengthen their practice, we too are forced to cast back their own ancient witnesses, who were once held in the highest esteem, so they do not think themselves superior to us in this matter.

Now let us return to our purpose, and let us strive to confirm with several reasons why simple and herbal medicine is healthier. Though many reasons could be assigned, this is the chief one: that they grow for us at home and (as Pliny says) "everyone dines on the best," though we trample these unknown plants with our feet. On the other hand, with what great dangers are exotic things brought through vast seas on rafts and ships! In those places, man and audacity are the only things present, and yet the goods are sometimes adulterated, aged, obsolete, rejected, and counterfeit. For there are infinite deceptions which that race of "Barbarians" Likely referring to the foreign merchants and traders in the spice and drug trade. imposes on us; unless what Pliny and Dioscorides The two primary Roman authorities on natural history and pharmacology. reported about them many centuries ago is untrue.