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ON THE UTILITY OF THIS WORK

BY ANDREAS LIBAVIUS, Doctor and Poet Laureate

A Poem.

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BY strength, the first men in their own labors set forth
The causes, powers, properties, and distinctions of things.
By their great discoveries they aided their far-off descendants,
And by their noble care they provided for the peoples.
Indeed, with these as guides, it began to be possible to discern
The best from the harmful, and to follow what was more useful for the body.
Moreover, if any bitterness were born within,
Or if a pestilence had arisen for the unwary:
Accustomed hence to seek protection and to uproot disease from the limbs,
They were able to restore themselves.
And this by an easy path: for every form, known by name,
Had long presented itself to their minds.
Until a more wicked age succeeded the fathers,
A race contemptuous of the good, and a fierce people.
Hence a raging madness, following the camps of Mars,
Confounded the knowledge and the signs of things.
Hence faith was withdrawn from the arts, and powers were denied
To exist within those things which the first elders taught.
A later generation, therefore, fashioned new names,
And brought forth things observed from another market.
You also, sluggish envy, were accustomed to change much,
And to fashion words with foreign marks,
Clearly so that you might basely snatch for yourself alone
The use of nature and the knowledge of the medical art.
But at last love and the zeal for helping triumphed,
And envious madness yielded to the good.
And thousands of names collected into a sum,
Advise everywhere with better hope by what things they are marked.
Whoever, therefore, wanders among straying authors,
And is dragged through paths to be doubted by ambiguous ways,
Hasten hither, about to remove vain cares from the mind:
Here you have the threads of Ariadne’s labor.
The great Hero BAUHIN, in medical endeavors,
Directs wandering feet in a certain course.
That industrious man, renowned in the train of Phoebus,
Gathered the titles of herbs as a good bee does;
And he brought them together into one work, in which you may
Promptly learn what marks any herb possesses.
Use this, therefore, with gratitude, and declare by your zeal
That so great a labor has not, through your study, perished.

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