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From the INTRODUCTORY:

"Nothing in the past is dead to the man who would learn how the present came to be what it is."

Among the literary monuments of early English medicine the "Compendium Medicinae" of Gilbertus Anglicus merits a prominent position as the earliest complete treatise on general medicine by an English author which has been preserved to our day, and eq... More

From the INTRODUCTORY:

"Nothing in the past is dead to the man who would learn how the present came to be what it is."

Among the literary monuments of early English medicine the "Compendium Medicinae" of Gilbertus Anglicus merits a prominent position as the earliest complete treatise on general medicine by an English author which has been preserved to our day, and equally because it forms in itself a very complete mirror of the medical science of its age and its country.

Gilbert was undoubtedly one of the most famous physicians of his time. His reputation is recognized in those well-known lines of Chaucer which catalogue the "authorities" of his Doctor of Phisik:

"Wel knew he the olde Esculapius
And Deyscorides and eek Rufus,
Olde Ypocras, Haly and Galyen,
Serapion, Razis and Avycen,
Averrois, Damascien and Constantyn,
Bernard and Gatesden and Gilbertyn."

He is also quoted with frequency and respect by the medical writers of many succeeding ages, and the Compendium, first printed in 1510, enjoyed the honor of a second edition as late as the seventeenth century (1608). The surname "Anglicus" in itself testifies to the European reputation of our author, for as Dr. Payne sensibly remarks, no one in England would speak of an English writer as "the Englishman."