Two Medico-Philosophical Discourses: On Fermentation

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To the Friendly Reader

Preface.

WHILE I was about to speak on Fermentation, the same thing happened to me that once happened to a famous historian of the Roman Empire while he was composing his commentary. Specifically, while he attempted to depict the affairs of only that nation as if on a small tablet, he found it necessary to review the deeds not of a single people, but of the entire human race. In the same way, while I myself was meditating on only a few things regarding the energy and the ways of working of ferments, almost the entire storehouse and every gift of nature nearly crept into this treatise, which has swelled up as if by a certain leavening original: ζυμώσει (zymōsei), a Greek term for fermentation or the process of rising. Having undertaken this inquiry, I thought I had been thrust into a workshop original: pistrina, which refers to a bakehouse or a mill, often associated with tedious labor and banished only to the ovens of bakers and brewers. I believed it was not permitted to proceed beyond those limits, except perhaps hurriedly, or after first seeking permission. After