TO THE MOST PREEMINENT AND

equally most learned man,

Master Franciscus Sangelaſius,

Dean of the church of

Engoliſma.

A decorative woodcut initial 'Q' featuring a floral motif with a central five-petaled flower and surrounding foliage within a square border.

WHEREAS I had resolved this firmly within myself, O most distinguished man, that it should be sought above all else that, having cast aside ignauia sloth by means of extended machines, I might dedicate myself to industria diligence, as far as both my genius natural disposition and the nature of the times might afford, such that, in applying my hand to the work, God? might sometimes run to my aid: and just as I had long ago conceived this in no common signs, that I was well-born and fashioned for iatri-cen the healing art, nor did I decide otherwise than to commit myself to this single study and labor, toward which I was propelled by nature and in which I might exercise my talent for a longer time. But so that I might provide an argument to my dearest friends, hiding nothing of this matter by art, but rather providing a proof with an exerted and brief hand, it seemed best to rush into the air from a more modest beginning, so that I might gradually be carried up to higher things. Nor are you ignorant of how much I hold that kind of man for nothing, who, with the lamp lifted, and the sound of the praetorian trumpet not yet passing through, throw all their strength into the arena and into the crisis itself, and because they are unequal to enduring the heat, either by not yet having provided a specimen of themselves, or by not having awaited the herald's voice, they withdraw themselves from the starting gates to their own great disgrace, and in a state of desperation, they pursue the diligence of the learned without any selection, and what they do not dare in open combat, they undermine by secret detraction and deceitful machinations, attacking not those who are robust, but those who are delicate, until, through the perversity of time laid bare, they collapse together, both from their purpose and from their reputation.