On Medical Materials in Six Books

And truly that was the cause for me of sustaining the edition of the commentaries, which I gathered into a collection at your house in Angoulême. While performing as a commentator on Dioscorides in Lyon, I reduced them into a compendium, with a style deliberately lowered, so that the less skilled, to whom I was writing these things, and who practice medicine, might be kindled to read Dioscorides studiously, so that, awakened from the negligence by which they are heavily oppressed, they might know, while reading these more elementary things, which simple substances are ready for anyone, which are unknown, or for any other reason not sufficiently understood, and which, and in what place, they must be sought. Furthermore, in this business, I did not act as an extemporaneous judge, but in expressing the faculties and form of simple substances, I followed Galen: but in the private judgment of simple substances, I restored that exceptional man, both in erudition and in perceived diligence, Matthiolius, especially since he labored singularly in judging Dioscorides, and indeed added the finishing touch. But truly, O man of most excellent talent, since I have perceived you to be deeply studious of Medicine, as you are of all philosophy, and mindful of your kindness, with which you received me like a hero with a shield, I thought it must be omitted entirely that I should dedicate these beginnings of my industry to you, so that, with you extending your hand to me, like a string, even without the bark, in this most ample bosom of the healing art, I might move safely toward the straits of the port itself. For now, with God as my leader, I am preparing to return the Arabians to Latinity, whom, having asserted from the barbarism and errors with which they are infested, I shall append that which differentiates what they wrote variably or differently from the Greeks, and I shall strive with all sails and oars, so that the reading of them for the learned may differ as little as possible from the Galenic and Hippocratic. Therefore, you most preeminent man, consider these beginnings favorably, coming as they do from one who testifies that he has promoted himself in letters beyond measure through you, and protect and read this scholion of Dioscorides, however much it may be. Farewell. Lyon, the sixth day from the Liberalia March 23rd, 1550.