Georgii Agricolae medici Bermannus, sive de re metallica

A decorative initial letter S depicts a figure standing in a landscape, perhaps representing a miner or scholar in the field.

OFTEN, when I reflect within myself—both upon the things that nature has produced or art has discovered, and upon the names that were once assigned to them in both Greek and Latin—I notice that both have suffered the greatest damage for several centuries now. The former because they were partly neglected and partly entirely unknown; the latter because they were either ineptly changed or replaced by certain barbarous terms. From this situation, such darkness has indeed been cast over the good disciplines and the illustrious arts, such forgetfulness of them has crept in, and, finally, such a disaster has followed, that they all seemed to be looking toward a certain ruin, as it were, had not that divine providence which rules and protects all things come to their aid in time, and stirred the industry of every best man to rescue them from the shadows and bring them back into the light; and—