A horizontal row of ten ornamental fleurons across the top of the page.

Preface

To the Favorable Reader.

Favorable, dear reader: No one can better recognize and testify to what a noble treasure health is than one who is still burdened with illness or has been troubled by it. For indeed, illness renders almost everything a person possesses—and in which they could find their pleasure and delight—useless. Wealth is not capable of altering the hardship and the vexation of illness. Beauty is disfigured by illness; wit and understanding original: Witz vñ Verstand; in the 17th century, "wit" referred to general mental faculty or intelligence rather than just humor are hindered. Now, just as health is the most joyful physical good that can happen to the body: so is illness the most burdensome evil. In the proverb, it is said: He who names war, names all