Your Excellency

Most Honorable Mr. President

The present work, which I dare to most humbly submit to Your Excellency, concerns a study which is undeniably highly necessary for anyone who wishes to become a rational and thinking physician. Your Excellency yourself once gave me to understand how perfectly convinced you are of the great utility of this study, and this very remark served as the greatest encouragement for me to continue my efforts in this field and, where possible, to make them more useful to the public, just as it now also determines me to submit the present chronological overview of the History of Medicine to Your Excellency's inclined