Examination of Officinal Medicines

In this way, wretched people are greatly deterred from the use of Medicines original: "Medicamentorum", nor do they easily feel any relief from those things which nature abhors. Thus, truly, he prostrates the best of Arts and himself, and exposes them to the contempt and mockery of the common people, who does not fear—amidst such an abundance of excellent remedies—to offer any shameful things, troublesome with a cadaverous and dung-like stench, unpleasant with a highly nauseating taste, and abominable in their whole substance to even a less delicate person, or even by their name alone.

For let us suppose that some healing power original: "medendi vim" resides in them; must they therefore be offered to the sick? I should not think so. It certainly proves a physician to be of remarkable simplicity if, by chance, he is unwilling to change those things which were used by the Ancients in the absence of better ones. But he will be judged less prudent or learned if he does not know how to substitute other, far more pleasing things in place of such nauseating ones. As if, indeed, a specific virtue A unique healing property believed to target a particular disease directly. against a certain disease were granted by the most kind Creator to only one thing; He who instead created all things for the sake of man, so that in case of necessity, one might find everywhere on earth the means to succor his misery. Clearly, there is no sickness for the cure of which innumerable remedies are not given; it is therefore by our own fault—that is, our laziness—that very many things, even the best, are left untried. Perhaps we can pretend an excuse whenever there is no lack of medicines; but if in a certain kind of disease only such filthy things are available, he sins gravely who ceases to try others or at least to search among Authors until some worthy and pleasing medicine has been found.

Among those things which we naturally abhor, without doubt the first is 1. Mummy original: "Mumia"; refers to the medicinal use of preserved human remains, a common but controversial practice in early modern pharmacy., along with everything taken from the human body, of which a huge number are nevertheless kept in the apothecary shops original: "officinis". There is a place in Egypt, distant some leagues from the ruins of Memphis, from whence those medicated corpses [come], according to the report of the eyewitness Breuning Hans Jacob Breuning von Buchenbach (1552–1617), an Oriental traveler who described the mummy trade.—