Scrutinium Physico-Medicum Contagiosae Luis quae Pestis Dicitur

Hieronymus Bardi, Doctor of Theology and Iatrophilus Euchymicus.

I have read through and tasted the Physico-Medical Scrutiny of the Plague, an exceptional work, small indeed in bulk but greatest in the weight of its learning, by Father Athanasius Kircher of the Society of JESUS, a man of universal knowledge and most renowned throughout the entire globe, at the diligent request of the Most Reverend Master of the Sacred Apostolic Palace; and I have found nothing in it to be corrected by civil, moral, or ecclesiastical censure. But since it is adorned with the most abstruse and thoroughly recondite observations and experiments, and is most profitable and necessary for the averting of the plague, it should therefore be submitted to the press as soon as possible, so that the Author—a priest and theologian, and one who in this work follows the example of Ranutius, Bishop of Orange, who wrote and published a regimen against pestilence and epidemic—may obtain the glory he deserves, and the readers may derive the greatest utility. From my study, 9 June 1657.