Ioannis Vuieri medicarum observationum rararum Liber I

It is for this reason that we grieve from the heart: and the most merciful God must be implored with an attentive mind, that he may deign, according to his infinite goodness, to inflame our minds with some new torches of mutual love. But lest I seem to have negligently omitted what is my part, and to have been lacking to my neighbor, I have desired, according to my own limited ability, not unwillingly to propose and communicate the argument of our profession, by which the will, affection, zeal, and admirable counsel of the eternal Father toward the human race might be understood, in restraining the unjust endeavors of men like a fatherly rod: while he not only sends unusual and unheard-of diseases, but also suggests counsels, and points out medicines, by the aid of which we may be vindicated from the violence of bitter calamities. It is, moreover, a certain collection of some of my observations, not indeed those vulgar ones, but rare ones, neither obvious nor known to just anyone skilled in our art. In this, first, I explain sincerely what I have observed to be worthy of knowledge in Scorbuto Scurvy; since this most foul plague is indeed old in its origin, but familiar only to certain peculiar regions: which nevertheless, within not many years, has begun to disseminate its virus more widely, so that now it torments and mutilates most people miserably in those places where not even the name, much less the disease, had been heard. And I describe not only what this is, its causes, signs, and predictions about it clearly; but I also by no means hide the reasons by which this plague, with its heap of bitter symptoms, can be overcome and eradicated. Then, those things which I considered to be considered in persistent Quartana quartan fever, contrary to the opinions of the ancients: likewise, those things which I have noted with singular industry in some pestilential diseases, namely Angina sore throat/strangulation, Pleuritide pleurisy, and Peripneumonia pneumonia, beyond the doctrines of others, both recent and ancient, most necessary for the use of the Christian republic, lest one be consulted in them with such blind reasoning in the future, I have not been reluctant to subjoin in order; and by such study I seem to have provided an opportunity for contemplating individual things with a clearer eye of the mind in other similar cases. Some things, moreover, observed externally, and especially in the cure of closed natural passages, I have finally annexed. By what diligence of mine, by what truth of the matter, which...