P R E F A C E.

I have read its content, sounding thus: Here lies Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus, a distinguished Doctor of Medicine, who removed those dire wounds, Leprosy, Gout, Dropsy, and other incurable bodily contagions with wonderful art, and honored his goods to be distributed and invested for the poor. In the year of our Lord 1541, on the 24th of September, he exchanged life for death.

A vertical series of five small decorative fleurons is arranged in the right margin.

What do you say now? If he were not such as he is proclaimed in the epitaph, the Magistrates would not have honored him with such a distinguished eulogy. Indeed, all prudent lovers of truth believe even now that no one was ever his equal. That he is held in contempt due to the envy of certain unlearned men detracts nothing from him, for he will remain Paracelsus, and these unlearned revilers, only revealing their own impudence and prostituting themselves, according to the old proverb: Art has no hater except the ignorant. I have written at least a little, and I am harassed even secretly by the envious; but since he opposed errors so strenuously, how could he be immune? This is the corrupt custom of the world, which must be taken in good part, since the Savior himself, when rebuking the errors of the Pharisees, experienced the same, being pursued by them with capital hatred even unto death.