PREFACE OF CONRAD GESNER, PHYSICIAN OF ZURICH, TO STUDENTS OF MEDICINE,

on the books concerning the nature of plants by Hieronymus Tragus, in which are enumerated those who have in any way up to this day published anything in writing concerning plants.

A decorative woodcut drop-cap 'N' depicting a figure in a landscape with buildings in the background.

BY THE GRACE OF GOD, THIS IS NO SMALL HAPPINESS OF OUR AGE, that partly within our own memory and partly within that of our fathers, an unworthy barbarism in almost all letters, arts, and sciences—both in words and in things, and in the knowledge of things—has begun to be driven away by good and learned men, and the ancient splendor of the Greek and Latin languages has begun to be recalled and restored to its whole state, as if by right of postliminium. Whence soon all the treasures of the sciences were opened through the use of languages as if by keys and instruments; and the best knowledge of various matters in sacred and profane letters, from which men of several prior centuries had long been excluded, was unlocked and communicated to all good and studious men, as if they had been admitted into the inner sanctuaries. At the same time, moreover, just as the rest of natural philosophy and medicine, so also the history of plants has been gradually reborn and cultivated by various nations as if in competition, so that in no age before ours does it seem to have reached such a height. For although many things handed down by the ancients are unknown to us, either because they did not leave accurate descriptions of individual items, or because our regions do not produce them; nevertheless, our age recognizes and successfully employs many more other medicines, especially in the genus of plants, which were unknown to the ancients, or certainly not recorded. That what I say is true will easily be established for him who compares the number of ancient pharmaceuticals—most all of which Dioscorides described—with those which are today noted and illustrated in writing by learned men. Nor is this surprising, for it is easy for a few things to be added gradually to the discoveries of ancestors; and as that man of Ascra says, even a few things added quite often finally produce a great heap.

Since, however, there is a great number of those who have published, increased, and illustrated herbal matters and the universal history of plants across different times, nations, and languages, I have wished to review the names of each, as many as I could presently grasp in memory or collect from those mentioned by others, in a certain order. First, therefore, I shall enumerate the Greeks, then the ancient Latins, thirdly the Arabs, and fourthly the more recent authors who have written both in Latin and in other languages now common, following an alphabetical order for each. For the chronological order in many cases is unknown to us, and a judgment as to who has written more learnedly or usefully than others is both difficult and invidious. I could cos pri-