On Medicine in Eight Books

A decorative woodcut drop cap initial letter "S" featuring intricate floral patterns and vine motifs within a square frame.

I present to you, kind Reader, A. CORN. CELSUS, a most Latin author, and a physician most wise and prudent. If I wished to recommend his affection to you, I would be doing the same thing as one who hangs ivy over good, aged wine. For just as one who knows the beauty and value of virtue cannot help but love and follow it, so too does everyone esteem Celsus, and everyone studies to turn his pages by day and by night; indeed, to convert them into one's own marrow and blood, as the saying goes. This is true for all except those who are ignorant of the brilliance, culture, industry, and skill with which he wrote these eight books on medicine—the only ones remaining to us from his many highly learned monuments of genius and laboriously spent vigils—and how he condensed them, primarily from HIPPOCRATES, the father of medicine, while also calling upon other authors for counsel in every more serious matter.