PRÆFATIO.

will be like that of all others. He, the most wise of Kings and of all mortals, who wrote books on the Nature of Plants from the Cedar of Lebanon to the Hyssop that is on the wall. Therefore, it is not rashly stated in Hippocrates' On Ancient Medicine: "The first [physicians] thought it worthy to attribute the art to a god." And that which is in On Decorum: "The physician who is a philosopher is equal to a god." For it is worth the effort here to carry wisdom into medicine, and medicine into wisdom. From this, do not think it was done without purpose that it is related in histories that Avicenna was the Vizier to the Kings of Persia, for which the Prince was called by that honor held by him.

Behold this study worthy of Kings, that is, the lesser gods of the nations, who, when they saw this sagacity inherent in brute Living Creatures from Nature, the most wise Parent of all things, such that each had knowledge of Remedies by its own instinct, by which they might protect their safety and life; they judged nothing more worthy of Man—I will not say free, but a King—than to leave the wild beasts behind in the study of this thing by as much of an interval as they excelled all those Creatures in the excellence of their Kind, over which even the least of those men who