Medical Compositions

as well as Cautions; so that the prudent physician might look around most carefully at what follows and what he should avoid. Furthermore, I have added the compositions desired from Galen, and indicated variants with notes; so that the curious would lack nothing. Finally, I have demonstrated that Scribonius has contributed somewhat to the sons of the art even with Latin charm, by the authority of contemporary and inferior writers from whom words received their law, with the addition of the fitness of the foreign idiom by the example of great men, demonstrated here and there in a special Index of words and phrases: to which he himself also lends the light he sometimes owes them. Galen was also pleased to be a grammarian in his place. Critics of which kind were once of great authority. But those things which were suspicious to me in them are recalled to the calculations of better minds by the mark of an asterisk, so that, by the advice of Fabius, an amended reading precedes the explanation. Indeed, Plutarch truly praises the maxim of the philosophers in On Isis and Osiris: Those who do not learn to understand words correctly are deceived even about the things themselves. Yet I would not want it said that I wrote easily for the best author of violated Latinity, even if occasionally one or two words peculiar to him occur, which are unusual to others, or of ancient custom. For even the prince of Roman eloquence suggests that such things should be softened by use; indeed, Scribonius himself excuses them: which we know were never lacking in the most choice writers at any age. I have never been ashamed, even in a good matter, of any author whatsoever; such as Pliny, whom most learned men, along with Paulus Jovius and Leonardus Fuchsius, believed Pierio Valeriano to be, and Apuleius, whom Ioannes Philippus de Lignamine and others called a Platonist, who are not entirely unworthy of the propitious ears of physicians. But I have not regretted calling upon later writers against the opinion of many, if they have progressed in any part, or commemorating others as partners in praise and work, who have suggested something worthy of letters.