DEDICATION.

also men of the highest intellect and most praised reputation, who bestowed much labor upon learning, expanding, adorning, and illustrating it. But even among the nobility, there were found those who determined excellently regarding it, and through their own expenditures and liberality advanced it to greater excellence. Hieronymus Rubeus, the philosopher and physician of Ravenna, collected many arguments not only for the antiquity but also for the dignity of chemistry. Among these is the fact that, as Albucase original: "Albucasis" reports, the Abarach KINGS note: Likely referring to Arab or Eastern kings took great delight in the art of distillation, and that Robert, King of Naples, and Edward, King of England, along with others, held its professors in the highest regard. The same author recounts many Princes of Italy who engaged in this study with great pleasure. It is a sacrilege to assign anything that smacks of the filth of the rabble to such heroes. Therefore, this art has preserved its splendor in the council of truth and the theater of the greatest dignity. No one is ignorant of how much labor has been spent in our times in our Germany in cultivating it, unless they are ignorant of the annals and chronicles of history. I pass over Cratones, Zvingerus, Gesner, and others who