On Medical Matters

PRAEFATIO Preface

a Latin interpretation of those books, which was produced by Ioannes Baptista Rasarius from two manuscripts—one offered by the Venetian patrician Matthaeus Dandolus, the other by Nicolaus Sammichelius, a physician of Novocomum—in such a way that the interpreter seems to have looked more toward an agreement with the common text of Dioscorides than to have aimed at uncovering the true sense. Perhaps, however, Oribasius happened upon a negligently written copy of Dioscorides, which, although it has many places stated better, leaves many more doubtful. Nor does the edition that Matthaei arranged at Moscow in 1804 provide any light, since, by a bad decision, he omitted everything that Oribasius had borrowed from others.

Aëtius has less authority and utility, both because he did not excerpt Dioscorides word-for-word, and because he added many things from other authors, and not a few from his own observation. Furthermore, only the Latin interpretation of this author by Cornarius is available, while the Greek text of the entire work still lies hidden in libraries; for the heirs of Aldus printed only the first book in 1534.

Of excellent use is Paulus Aegineta, whose complete and properly reviewed work Hieronymus Gemusaeus edited at Basel in 1538. The medicines are enumerated in the seventh book, succinctly indeed, but in such a way that they occasionally provide no small light to Dioscorides.

Apuleius, a writer of uncertain age—whom you should not confuse with the one from Madaura, nor with that Celsus of Centuripae—compiled a short work on herbal medicines from Dioscorides and Pliny, which serves to explain various places in Dioscorides, especially regarding barbarian synonyms. It was published in our memory by the study of Ackermann in 1788.

Fruits, however, are to be gathered most abundantly from comparing Serapion, who in the ninth century composed an aggregator written in Syriac in such a way that he used Dioscorides and Galen.