Florum et coronariarum historia

DEDICATION.

impart. Thus, Nature seems to have bestowed no property upon any plant species which she has not also shared with its flowers, and then even more abundantly conferred upon them. And it is indeed far from the truth that the substance of flowers is either meager or sterile, or that it contributes nothing to medicine, as certain unlearned sycophants and slanderers loudly claim. These men believe that knowledge not only of flowers but of all herbs and simple medicines simplicia: medications made from a single natural ingredient, usually a plant—and even of compound ones—is unnecessary for a physician. In fact, they condemn such knowledge with rash daring as if it were superfluous, casting it aside and judging it to belong only to pharmacists Pharmacopœi: from the Greek 'pharmakopoios', meaning those who prepare drugs; apothecaries or to women.

By this opinion alone, they clearly show themselves to be unworthy of the title and name of "physician." For the knowledge of plants original: "stirpium", herbs, and other simple medicines, as well as many compound ones, is so intertwined with the other parts of the medical art that no one can truly possess a knowledge of Medicine who is ignorant and unskilled in them. This is something both I have written elsewhere, and Galen Claudius Galenus (129–c. 216 AD), the Greek physician whose theories dominated Western medical science for over a millennium himself has left recorded in clear words. For if every craftsman has the instruments of his art known and [kept] in num-
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