Complete Works, Volume 1: The Book on Games of Chance

...; and similarly if the second tome takes one part of the Physical works, and the third another; finally if the Medicinal works are dispersed into four tomes, namely the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth, as the abundance of the material persuades. How many and which books or treatises they are, and in what order they are placed, the General Index of Works expressed in its proper place will teach. But because among those Works not a few now appear in public for the first time, dug up from the author's autographs, we have judged that these themselves should be marked with such a character (†) in the aforementioned Index, so that they may be more easily distinguished from those already published long ago. However, it is to be lamented above all else that the injury of fate has begrudged us some relics of such a great man. For many membranes reached our hands so torn, or so badly treated by moths and the incursions of mice, or written in such faded and unrecognizable characters, that it was not permitted to extract anything from them that might be of any benefit. In this class were the last two of the ten books of Medical Contradictions, which therefore it was necessary to omit; and furthermore various books of Geometric Elements, a Treatise on Putrid Fevers, a Treatise on the French Disease, Commentaries on Books III and VI of Hippocrates' Epidemics, as well as on the books of Predictions, Commentaries on Galen's Medical Art, Commentaries on Galen's books on the Differences of Diseases, and on the Differences of Symptoms, as well as on Galen's books on the Differences of Fevers. Finally, besides these, it must not be concealed that certain other writings of Cardano, mentioned by Gabriel Naudé, are missing here, as they could by no means be obtained by us, however eagerly we searched for them; such as the Book on Eminent Prudence, the Book on the Origin of Winds, and Experiments for all Diseases. To say nothing now of the writings that are thought to have clearly perished, among which, besides the thirteen books of Metoposcopy, which the aforementioned Naudé affirms to have perished, there are many other books mentioned here and there by the author himself, of which today only the mere titles remain, but of the context neither the wish nor the trace appears any longer. Who, I ask, being made of better clay, would not grieve at the loss of so many completely vanished lucubrations? Indeed, even of those from which we were permitted to religiously collect and consecrate to posterity only meager fragments: from which, surely, we judge that a pollostemorion small fraction/tiny particle of their total excellence and greatness can be gathered in no other way than the stature of Pythagoras is said to have been discovered in olden times from the mere footprint of the Herculean body, or rather, than the height of giants can be measured in the mind from one or two dug-up bones. Would that there may arise in the future those who, using a more fortunate Mercury than we, may amicably bring to light the memoranda that have escaped us; by which very accomplishment they should be most persuaded that they will earn great gratitude, not only from us, but from all the other citizens of the Republic of Letters. FAREWELL, MOST HUMANE READER, and look kindly upon our endeavors.