The Canon of Medicine

...such medicines, such as sandali sandalwood, casia cassia, turbit turpeth root, muschus musk, and many others, and yet they are so necessary for human health that without them health can scarcely be recovered. The enemies of the Arabs are an argument for this matter, who do not know how to cure the sick without the remedies of the Arabs: nor do they blush to condemn those without whom medicine, if not imperfect, would certainly have been horrible and fearsome. For this reason, these men ought to lay aside their malevolence, stirred up by the rashness of certain smatterers, and rather read Avicenna: and attentively consider what is said by him, because they would discover in him not only whatever was discovered by the Greeks, but even much more, or certainly better things: nor was it established without cause from the earliest times that in all universities, this author should be read, explained, and debated for the candidates of medicine every single year without interruption: from this it has happened that so many excellent masters have devised so many things regarding Avicenna, such as the great speculator Gentilis, the famous expositor Iacobus Giacomo della Torre, the subtle disputer Dinus Dino del Garbo, and many others whom it is not necessary to commemorate at present, as they are known to all, and these always valued Avicenna so much that they surnamed him the Prince of Physicians. I pass over the remaining professors of this writer, who indeed procured the highest honors for themselves, but left huge wealth to their posterity. I would make an end of speaking if I did not think that I should not omit that this excellent prince Avicenna has exhibited to us, as the crown of the feast, a little book, no less learned and witty than pleasant and useful, in which he considers the nature of spirits and their qualities, and for what causes they are changed and act: but the spirit is a certain vapor generated from the blood in the heart, thicker than air, but thinner than vapor, through which the soul administers and agitates the body as a suitable instrument: And no one, neither of the ancients nor the moderns, has touched such hidden material and such a recondite speculation, so that he alone appears to have been the first to discover this part of medicine, and the only one to have completed it: Finally, he added a certain short compendium, called the Cantica Songs/Poem of Medicine, in which, as if through principal sentences, he encompasses summarily everything which pertains to both the speculative and operative part of the whole work: a matter altogether very necessary for cognition and memory. Now, therefore, putting an end to the instituted discourse, I seem to myself to have proven with evident and clear arguments that all those conditions which we were seeking from the very beginning are found in this excellent writer: Wherefore, you, my most beloved sons, and whoever else has not disdained to read these things of ours, I urge and adjure you to always have Avicenna in your hands, because if you read, consider, and learn him not like dogs sipping the water of the Nile, but again and again, you will find such food in him that your mind will be able to be abundantly satiated, whether it wishes to contemplate or to operate: But from you, my beloved sons, I ask this even more, that you defend Avicenna with great spirit and all your strength against the curses of enemies: and as is just, protect your father against those who will bark at me because I have undertaken the patronage of this doctor in this age, in which he is impugned by everyone everywhere, when he should have been safe and fortified by his own merits, and as in all previous centuries, so also in this age, celebrated.