TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE AND LORD, JOACHIM

...and is thus ignorant of the very instruments of healing. Indeed, this sluggishness, sloth, listlessness, and negligence of certain physicians is to be detested—if for no other reason, then certainly for this one above all: that it has caused almost all knowledge of plants to be extinguished and utterly destroyed. And it would have been quite the end for herbal medicine, had God not raised up a few good, learned, and diligent men who wished to assist this study—which was already tending toward total destruction and was nearly entirely forgotten—through their greatest vigils and labors, and to rescue it from ruin.

Hermolaus Barbarus.

Among those who have strenuously applied themselves to this care, in my opinion, the first place is held by the renowned Hermolaus Barbarus Hermolao Barbaro (1454–1493) was an Italian scholar famous for his efforts to correct the corrupted texts of ancient scientists like Pliny., distinguished by both his noble birth and his erudition. He was the first of all in our age, so far as I know, to undertake this most beautiful deed and dare to recall this part of medicine—by no means to be despised—from the darkness into the light. For at the start of that labor, he presented to the Latin world original: "Latio donauit," meaning he translated the work into Latin so it could be read by scholars of his time. Dioscorides, the most excellent author on medical materials original: "medica materia," or materia medica, the study of the medicinal properties of natural substances., who had already been approved for many centuries.

The Corollary of Hermolaus.

Having successfully completed that labor, he added a Corollary An additional commentary or supplement to his translation of Dioscorides., which the learned admit with one voice to be the most erudite, most copious, and finally, the most varied work published in the Latin language since Pliny. For whatever was noted in scattered form by Theophrastus, Athenaeus, Oribasius, Aëtius, Paulus, Pollux, Pliny, and other very learned men—both Greek and Latin, whom there is no need to name now—Barbarus gathered all of it in his Corollary as if into a single bundle. Indeed, I believe the zeal of this most celebrated man is to be all the more praised by us because he himself was the first to deign to extend a helping hand to the tottering and soon-to-fall field of botany, even though he was not a physician by profession, while the physicians meanwhile "slept soundly on either ear" A classical idiom used to describe people who are lazy, unconcerned, or willfully ignorant of a problem..

Jean Ruel.

A little later, Jean Ruel Jean Ruel (1474–1537) was a French physician and one of the pioneers of modern botany., a Frenchman, followed the example and purpose of this incomparable man. He was a man endowed with a knowledge of things that was no common feat, beyond even his skill in languages. With equal effort and zeal, about to do battle with "monstrous portents" Fuchs refers to the many errors and mistranslations that had crept into medical texts over the Middle Ages., he presented to us that same author Dioscorides. translated into Latin, from whom we might seek a true and exquisite knowledge of medical materials. This was done so that, with the insipid and error-filled opinions of Avicenna and other Arabs on botany finally banished and hissed off the stage, we might drink the knowledge of plants from the purest fountain of Dioscorides.

These two distinguished men thus vied with each other to see who might surpass the other; a truly honorable contest, as both Hesiod and our own Galen testify, from which both achieved immortal glory. Furthermore, since Ruel noticed that the ancient and legitimate names of plants, by which Dioscorides called them, had now become obscured and obliterated by the addition of new ones—which the superstition of Monks and simple women have obscured the ancient names of plants. monks and simple women original: "muliercularum," a diminutive often used by scholars of this era to dismiss folk traditions or non-academic knowledge. had for the most part produced—and that individual plants were not sufficiently observed through Dioscorides alone, he wished to publish a work a few years ago. This work, as it appears, was adorned by many long nights of study, and he gave it the title Ruel’s work On the Nature of Plants. On the Nature of Plants. In this work, he certainly strove with great zeal to embrace almost everything written about plants anywhere by Theophrastus, Pliny, Galen, and other approved authors, both ancient and recent.

For this reason, that good man is spoken of poorly by many today, because he transferred many things into his own commentaries transcribed word-for-word from elsewhere—especially from Pliny and the Corollary of Hermolaus—while suppressing their names. It is as if those who find fault with Ruel is defended against slander. this were themselves quite free from this vice! Yet, to offer some defense for a man now dead, we will mention only one thing. We believe there is no one who does not know that Pliny wove together his vast work on the history of the world, worthy of immortality, from the most ancient and various authors. Yet he does not make mention of them by name in every single place from which he transcribed individual parts, content to have done so only once. Therefore, since Pliny is hardly blamed for mentioning his sources only once (specifically in the first book), how is it that this same thing is held as a vice in Ruel? Especially since it is well known that in the preface of his work, he frankly admits that he digested into a compendium those things handed down in scattered form by the ancients, and was helped by them to such an extent that he owes nearly the whole work to them.