A Volume of Philosophical, Medical, and Chymical Letters Written by the Foremost Philosophers and Physicians of Our Age
- Creator
- Lorenz Scholz von Rosenau
- Date
- 1598
- Date added
- 20 July 2026 5.01 am
- Date modified
- 24 July 2026 2.30 am
Document notes
Original title: Epistolarum philosophicarum, medicinalium ac chymicarum a summis nostrae aetatis philosophis ac medicis exaratarum volumen An edited folio anthology of learned Latin medical-philosophical correspondence, compiled by the Breslau physician and botanist Lorenz Scholz von Rosenau, gathering letters exchanged among the foremost physicians and natural philosophers of the Empire and Italy—among them Crato von Krafftheim, Andreas Dudith, Peter Monau, Theodor Zwinger, Thomas Erastus, Girolamo Mercuriale, Girolamo Capivaccio, Giulio Cesare Aranzi, and Thomas Moffet. Rather than a treatise, it is an edited archive in which each exchange is arranged as a disputed question of learned medicine, treating the learned letter as a dialectical, erotematic, and didascalic instrument of inquiry. Its central concern is the standing of the new chymical and Paracelsian art against inherited Galenic-Hippocratic authority, with chymistry admitted as the handmaid of medicine (ministra medicinae) but denied doctrinal primacy and Paracelsus and his followers repudiated as fraudulent. The letters range across debates on contagion, poison, materia medica, physiology, and cosmology, and the volume is furnished with a Catalogus Auctorum, an Interpretatio Graecorum glossing Greek medical terminology, and an Index rerum et verborum. It is dedicated to the Silesian officers of Rudolf II's imperial chamber. 👉 Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here 📜 View the original source file This text was transcribed and translated as part of the ExLatinis project—an effort by Leo to make English translations of every published text in Latin in early modern Europe (between 1450 and 1750) available to the public for free online.
Document excerpt
EPISTOLARVM PHILOSOPHICARVM: MEDICINALIVM, AC CHYMI. CARVM à Summis nostræ Ætatis Philosophis ac Medicis Exaratarum, VOLV MEN; Opus, cum ob remediorum saluberrimorum copiam; tum ob variam doctrinam, ac variis generis difficulium & obscurarum quæstionum explicationem non solùm Medicis, verumetiam Philosophis admodum utile, ac necessarium. Addito ELENCHO rerum omnium notatu dignissimarum refertissimo. Nunc primùm labore, ac industria LAVRENTII SCHOLZI à Rosenaw Medicinæ Doctoris, isto modo foras datum. HANOVIÆ Typis Wechelianis apud hære- des Ioannis Aubrii. M DC. X. Cum priuilegio Casa. Maiest. ad annos Decem.