A rectangular decorative headpiece composed of four rows of repeating ornamental stamps, possibly stylized floral or foliate motifs. Below this, a large decorative woodcut initial 'P' featuring intricate foliate patterns begins the main body of text.

PREFACE.

Physiology is a certain Medical physics, from which all who desire to build their foundations for both theoretical and practical Medicine can easily and briefly—like the Iliad in a nutshell—draw the science of all things observable in the natural state of the human body. Thus, it is well called that science in Medicine which contemplates the human body in its healthy state, examining it thoroughly: 1. As a hydraulic-pneumatic machine composed of and tempered from various substances. 2. The naturally constituted causes of this machine. 3. The manifold accidents as they are visible in a natural state: and 4. Health itself. Since we have such a shortage of time that it is not permitted to examine all four limbs of this Physiology properly, we shall taste only the single one, which is the first, with brief lips. This is especially so because it is abundantly clear that most students of Medicine rarely or never write down those things which are dictated somewhat more extensively in the schools of the Peripatetics, much less grasp them due to the vastness of the subject matter, which is especially odious. Thus, it seems highly necessary to specially consider those primary substances which seem to compose our bodily machine. Although this consideration should deservedly be done under a multiple schema, since there are many sects, consensuses, and opinions about the principles of the human body in Medicine, which have hitherto claimed their followers in droves, we think it is sufficient for the medical novice if the primary principles of the human body are proposed under a single schema. The first will be that of the Modern Galenists, or Peripatetic-Galenists, who do not—as some Pseudo-Galenists define them—confuse the pure with the impure, but set before themselves the probable foundations of Medicine, sought from authority, proven by reason, and confirmed by experience. Hence, they easily distinguish the pure from the impure, and the true from the false. We wish to insist on these, in order to satisfy our intention, with principles sought from Aristotle, as they are already accommodated to our schools everywhere. The second will be that of the Modern Chemists, who say here and now that they assume the same prime matter as Aristotle, but add to the human body an additional double soul: one spiritual, as proper to man, which is called rational; another material, which is said to be like that of the brutes, and sensitive, which presides over all material operations. These take their origin at the point of Chymia Alchemy/Chemistry, or chemical operations—not, as Fallopius thinks in his treatise on metals, Ch. 11, from the time of the Mohammedan sect: nor as Thomas Erastus believes on page 101 of his work on Metals, with Nicolaus Guibertus, that all chemical books were written before 3 or 4 centuries ago, since books written in Greek...