TO THE READER.

Therefore, in Astronomy, in Geometry, in Dialectics, and in all those arts that are concerned with the investigation of truth, we read that Roman intellects performed worthily of their efforts. However, the art of Medicine alone, which is most beneficial, lay neglected, uncultivated, and abandoned by them. Pliny is the witness that the Roman gravity did not practice this one of the Greek arts. Indeed, the same man writes that the Roman people, though eager for medicine, eventually condemned it after testing it. Thus, they went without physicians until the six-hundredth year. It must be believed that they wished this not out of hatred for the art, but for the practitioners. Marcus Cato teaches this most clearly while writing to his son Marcus. But if Rome had possessed a Hippocrates to whom it could entrust the health of its citizens, or if it had known the monuments of Galen as an interpreter, it is likely that its industry would have been excellent in medicine as well, just as it either surpassed all other nations in military matters and other things, or was second to them, and at times equal. Nevertheless, to show that this part was not beyond Roman strength, Cornelius Celsus treated it most eloquently and expertly in eight books.