Eight Books on Medicine

...at the beginning of the rise of literature, which had lain dormant in the land of Italy for six hundred years, they adopted Victorinus Feltrensis Vittorino da Feltre, a noted humanist educator. Your royal youths began to imbibe his teaching from their earliest years. You, however, as I see, equal the praise of your ancestors in other arts, and in this one care of adorning literature and learned men, you strive to surpass them. With great zeal, you have adopted every learned man into your household from your youth, and you have always honored them with great rewards.

For to omit Furnius, whom you have always deservedly honored, you have surely embraced Romulus Romulus Amaseus from the beginning, in such a way that you did not stop until you had made him your perpetual companion in studies. This praise is the greater because this iniquity of the times calls away even the most leisurely men from literature, and Romulus, although he was teaching most honorably at Bologna, preferred to follow you and to rest with you as with an excellent Prince, not doubting that his advancing age could flourish under you as a princely man.

But why should I say with what zeal you have made Franciscus Asulanus A son-in-law of Aldus Manutius, he took over the Aldine Press devoted to you? Following the hereditary praise of Aldus, he has done everything so that good literature, both Greek and Latin, might receive greater cultivation day by day. And he, while he was mulling this care over in his mind night and day, soon your authority and greatness were added, which would incite the running horse, as they say, to a stronger race. For when he undertook other things for your sake alone, he undertook the publication of the most useful and elegant books on medicine by Cornelius Celsus.

He undertook this all the more willingly because he received from you, first of all, a truly corrected manuscript. I undertook this burden, that Celsus might be received by the public as corrected as possible—not because I am the most learned of all, but because I have always favored the name of Franciscus, his family, and especially Aldus—not unwillingly. And I trust, as I hope, that I have accomplished this not under an ill-omened star, so that learned men may gladly read these books of Celsus and the unlearned may not despise them.

Since this work comes to light under your auspices alone, it deservedly demands your patronage. We have added to this the poem of Q. Serenus Quintus Serenus Sammonicus, a Roman medical writer, which is not useless, in which that not unsuccessful poet has encompassed both several diseases and the remedies for diseases. If he could hardly be read by law, today, if I am not mistaken, learned men will read him both very willingly and pleasantly.

I, indeed, dedicate to you whatever small work I expended in correcting Celsus. As an amplifier of your virtue, I dedicate all my industry to you alone forever. Yet leaving it testified to you that if more leisure had been given to me, occupied as I am with the heavy tasks of teaching, I would have ensured that Cornelius would emerge, I will not say more neat, but certainly more lovable. For I had intended to set up brief notes on the vocabulary, on the more obscure meanings, and even interpretations of Greek terms. Furthermore, I had decided to append many things from Galen and Hippocrates...