TO THE UNBIASED READER,

AND THE STUDENT

OF THE MOST ANCIENT

Hippocratic Doctrine.

PREFACE.

Ornamental drop cap 'H' containing a figure of a man (likely a scholar or physician) seated at a desk within an architectural frame.
Hippocrates, the most radiant light of Medicine, veiled his divine oracles in enigmas, and delivered his precepts laconically original: "laconicè." Refers to the style of the Spartans (Laconia), known for using few words; here, it means Hippocrates was intentionally brief and cryptic. throughout all the works of his teaching; so much so, that his obscure brevity and his sayings have been distorted by various writers into many different meanings. Some of these, Galen Galen of Pergamon (129–216 AD), the most influential physician of antiquity after Hippocrates, who systematized medical knowledge into a rigid framework that dominated Europe for 1,500 years. arranged into chapters with wonderful skill of art and in graceful order; others, however, and especially the GOLDEN LITTLE BOOK ON DIET original: "AVREVM LIBELLVM DE DIÆTA." This refers to the Hippocratic treatise De Victu, which Tachenius believes contains hidden chemical secrets., which is full of mysteries, he left untouched. For the divine old man A respectful reference to Hippocrates. assigned these to the practitioners of chemistry original: "chimiæ cultoribus." Tachenius is arguing that Hippocrates was an early chemist whose true meaning can only be understood by chemists. alone, an art which of old—and perhaps in the age of Hippocrates—was called natural philosophy. Who...