TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS

AND MOST VENERABLE

Prince and Lord, John Rudolph Stoër, Abbot of the collegiate

churches of Murbach and Lüders, a most illustrious

hero, his lord and patron

An oval heraldic seal is positioned on the right side of the dedication text. It contains a figure holding a staff or spear, encircled by a Latin inscription that includes the words "SIGILLVM" (seal) and "COLLEGIO" (college). To the left of the main body text is a large, ornate decorative initial 'I' containing a miniature scene.

Among all those, most Reverend and venerable Prince, who, whether descending from Aesculapius or desiring to communicate the sacred and holy art of Apollo to posterity liberally and without envy—communicating both methodically and periodically, and wishing to keep the human race safe and sound and to defend it from disease—the divine Hippocrates has held first place without controversy or doubt among all nations of the world up to this very day. And for this reason, honorable antiquity has called him the Prince of physicians, the ancient parent of the Paeonian referring to the healing arts associated with Paeon, physician to the gods art, and finally, a divinity. After Hippocrates, Galen, the greatest physician of the same school, easily takes the second honor of the art. It is certain that this entire discipline, and all the theorems considered within this faculty, emanate from him as from a most limpid and sweet spring. For he received this art from Hippocrates (as he confesses in many places) and greatly amplified and perfected it. These two brought the exquisite and perfectly polished medical art before us, depicted as graphically in its colors as Zeuxis brought grapes or Parrhasius brought the veil onto the stage a reference to the famous contest of ancient painters where their work appeared indistinguishable from reality. And what is more to be admired, these same men both discovered such an admirable art and left it consummated in every detail. Their reading, at least, captures and affects us above all else. But what prevents the most fruitful rivers—the medicine of the Arabs and Barbarians a common period term for non-Greek or non-Latin scholars—from flowing from those most limpid fountains, Hippocrates and Galen? Even though it is not quite as clear and brilliant, it should not be discarded as if it were fruitless and useless. Just as we see other highly fertile springs and most pleasant rivers flowing from small fountains, which often confer more benefit upon the human race than the fountains themselves, for these sometimes run dry. But that they seem less pleasant than the Greeks, and more turbulent and squalid—and indeed they are—I judge to be due not so much to the authors themselves, whose language is universally considered inelegant, awkward, and harsh, but rather to the incompetent translators, who have rendered everything horrific with their most unrefined style, and with corrupted and obscure Arabic and Barbaric terms and much awkwardness. And without doubt, if such authors existed in their own language, and if it were as well known to us as Greek and Latin, they would not move most readers to such nausea.