BENEDICTUS RINIUS

TO FABRICIUS, SCIPIO, ALBERT, AND CLAUDIUS,

HIS MOST JOYFUL SONS.

A historiated woodcut initial 'C' depicts a scholar in a gown and cap, seated at a desk with an open book, surrounded by architectural motifs.

My dearest sons, I have often considered within myself what gift I could bestow upon you that would offer as much utility as it does delight, and that would serve not only as an ornament but also as a perfection to your minds. Among the many things that came to mind, the knowledge of medicine presented itself. For, by weighing this matter carefully, I found it contains a great many of the conditions I desired for you. It possesses no common utility, it provides exceptional delight, and it encompasses no small part of human happiness, since many natural effects, along with the causes from which they originate, are taught therein.

Medicine does not only propose to those who learn it everything that Nature, the parent of all things, has generated from the elements, and all things endowed with life, sense, and motion; it also explains the individual properties and virtues of each. Nor is it content with these things alone; it teaches the admirable structure of the human body, fashioned with such artistry that there is no part, neither inside nor outside, that does not possess its own specific uses and functions. Therefore, I judged these considerations to be of great ornament to you and to all who desire to attain knowledge of things and to find stability therein. This is especially true since they show the path and method by which we may preserve the health granted to us by nature, and recover it if it is lost by some chance.

It is also the case that men, as often happens when they live where no doctors are present, could, if imbued with this knowledge, not only preserve and cure themselves and fully extricate themselves from a grave disease, but also, when they are present but either unskilled or imprudent, correct their errors by now preventing and now moderating. Thus, it is clearly concluded that every noble mind ought to strive with great study and every diligence to attain so useful and pleasant a discipline, which bestows so many goods upon its possessors and offers them such great emolument.

For these reasons, I have examined with no small diligence the codices of the ancients and the books of the moderns, as many as exist written by the eminent men of this discipline, yet I could not find a single volume that encompassed all the aforementioned conditions according to my heart's desire. To begin with that great and admirable Hippocrates: he certainly left behind many and varied books on medicine, but neither the series of order, nor the clarity of brevity, nor the completion of the art appears in them, since, as the wisest man Galen rightly affirms, the Coan referring to Hippocrates, who was from the island of Cos artisan handed down only the seeds of medicine for posterity to cultivate.

Wherefore, as far as I can conjecture, Hippocrates himself, reflecting upon the abundance and diversity of the works he had written, wished to add a book that would contract the prolixity of the preceding ones into a short summary, which he called the Aphorisms. Yet even this little book is both maimed and too concise, and digested in no order of teaching; if anyone wishes to master it, he will need long and lucid expositions.

Therefore, having dismissed Hippocrates, let us come to that immense ocean of doctrine and man of great reading, Galen. After many centuries, having found such a noble discipline not so much brief as obscure, he strove to extend and illustrate it with an abundance of speech and the magnitude of his erudition. But while he attempted both to root out the faults of his predecessors and to amend the errors of the living, so that he might later reveal the way and mode of healing sincerely, he gathered so many and such great things that he overwhelms the purity of doctrine we were seeking with a profusion of words and things; indeed, a man's life is scarcely enough to read his books.

The medicine described by him in these long and redundant books seems to me very much like wheat recently harvested from the stalks, and still mixed with chaff and dust; if you wish to separate it, there is need for long and troublesome threshing and winnowing. For this reason, let us also dismiss Galen for the present and examine Oribasius for a little while. It is certain that, with the art already established, he wrote three books on medicine, which, both individually and collectively, fall far short of the integrity of the whole faculty.

Alexander also gained the name of physician more through his skill in healing than through his work, which is far removed from the perfection of the art. Nor did Paul of Aegina, while striving to prune the vine-shoots of Galen, hold to a middle ground; rather, he fell into another extreme, so meager and maimed that he omitted many things necessary to know. Finally, Aetius of Amida, although he appears more copious than Paul, nevertheless contracted many things that he should have extended, and omitted more about which there should have been discussion.

Therefore, since I had not found among the Greek writers—though they were learned and endowed with great judgment—that which I was seeking with such great study, I turned myself to the Arabs who wrote on this faculty. And first, I noticed that Serapion passed over many things in silence, without which this science is exceedingly mutilated and imperfect, as anyone who peruses his book can be a most wealthy witness to himself. Then I considered that great empiric called Rasis, who does not satisfy in all his volumes, since he is for the most part so concise and narrow that he becomes obscure...