De anodinis medicamentis eorumque causis et usibus Physica & Medica consideratio in Theses aliquot digesta

fire of Venus, as if burned by some infernal flame. In the forum, the most honorable wife of Flaccus collapses, overcome by pain due to an aborted fetus. Hence those voices and sighs among the people: "Alas, Juno Lucina, bring aid!" "Aesculapius, Hippocrates, Galen, help; take half of my goods." Tell me, best of friends, why do you hesitate? It is truly your role to bring help to a suffering friend. Bring relief to your father, little daughter; and you, oh half of my soul, bring relief to your suffering husband. Hence those little prayers of the papists referring to Catholics to their fictitious physicians: "Saint Anthony, I ask that you extinguish this flame of erysipelas." "Divine Sempronius, accept this little bandage (your votive offering), and free me from this bubo of the groin more quickly, if you can." Finally, hence flow so many laments of wives, groans of friends, and tears of daughters, and so many empty and superstitious prayers are poured out. When I weighed each of these individually, pitying human calamity and being most studious of alleviating it, I thought nothing more worthy of a physician than to put a bridle on pain; by doing which, the princes of physicians, by whose work the sick were soothed, were called the hands of the gods. I therefore began to collect Mandrake, Poppy, Henbane, and other plants of that kind in the gardens of physicians, and to view their powers, essences, and uses with a deeper mind. In short, I perceived nothing in medicine more certain than to suddenly restrain the heat of pain. But, lest I seem like those who, unskilled in riding, keep noble horses, I have often wished to treat the true use of anodynes most copiously, and I have held nothing as more important than to be granted some opportunity to pursue that project. This time, in which the honors of the Doctorate are being discussed, most conveniently proposed and invited me to complete, in some way, this little work on Anodynes, which I had begun—though not as I had planned—and polished. Therefore, I wanted to dedicate this, however little it may seem, to you, both so that you might see the inclination of my mind and the due respect I have for you, sketched out as if by this first brushstroke, and because you can judge most acutely and most truly concerning this hypothesis which we are treating. Fare well and happily; and as long as my soul endures, count me as one who is most desirous of your dignities and successes in the Medical field, (my best Teachers). Given from the Campus Martius a nickname for a location in Basel, Basel, the 19th of the Kalends of January, 1578.