- See also John Gerard, S.J.
John Gerard, S.J. was an English Jesuit priest, operating covertly during a period in which the Catholic Church was subject to persecution in England. He was the son of Sir Thomas Gerard of Bryn, near Ashton in Makerfield, Lancashire, who had been imprisoned in 1569 for plotting the rescue of...
John Gerard (
NantwichNantwich is a market town in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The town gives its name to the parliamentary constituency of Crewe and Nantwich...
, 1545 – February, 1611/12 in
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9036536) was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
herbalistAn herbalist is:#A person whose life is dedicated to the economic or medicinal uses of plants.#One skilled in the harvesting and collection of medicinal plants ....
famous for his herbal garden. After being educated in
WillastonWillaston is a civil parish and village in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, in north-west England. It has a population of 2,277 people according to the 2001 census. It is approximately three miles west of Crewe town centre and two miles east of Nantwich...
near Nantwich he started to study medicine and travelled widely as a ship's
surgeonSurgery is a medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, to help improve bodily function or appearance, or sometimes for some other reason...
.
- See also John Gerard, S.J.
John Gerard, S.J. was an English Jesuit priest, operating covertly during a period in which the Catholic Church was subject to persecution in England. He was the son of Sir Thomas Gerard of Bryn, near Ashton in Makerfield, Lancashire, who had been imprisoned in 1569 for plotting the rescue of...
John Gerard (
NantwichNantwich is a market town in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The town gives its name to the parliamentary constituency of Crewe and Nantwich...
, 1545 – February, 1611/12 in
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9036536) was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
herbalistAn herbalist is:#A person whose life is dedicated to the economic or medicinal uses of plants.#One skilled in the harvesting and collection of medicinal plants ....
famous for his herbal garden. After being educated in
WillastonWillaston is a civil parish and village in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, in north-west England. It has a population of 2,277 people according to the 2001 census. It is approximately three miles west of Crewe town centre and two miles east of Nantwich...
near Nantwich he started to study medicine and travelled widely as a ship's
surgeonSurgery is a medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, to help improve bodily function or appearance, or sometimes for some other reason...
. From 1577 on, he supervised the gardens of William Cecil, Lord Burghley in London. In 1595 Gerard became a member of the Court of Assistants in the Barber-Surgeon's company, in 1597 he was appointed Junior Warden of the Barber-Surgeons, in 1608 Master of the same.
In 1596, he published a list of rare plants cultivated in his
gardenA garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. The most common form is known as a residential garden. Western gardens are almost universally...
at
HolbornHolborn is an area of Central London, England. Holborn is also the name of the area's principal east-west street, running from St Giles's High Street as High Holborn to Gray's Inn Road to Holborn Viaduct, crossing the borders of the City of Westminster, London Borough of Camden and the City of...
, still extant in the
British MuseumThe British Museum is a museum of human history and culture situated in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from...
, and in 1597 his famous Great Herball, or General Histoire of Plantes
. In 1633 an enlarged and amended version was printed for which Gerard used the Materia Medica
of Dioscorides, the works of the German botanists FuchsLeonhart Fuchs , sometimes spelled Leonhard Fuchs, was a German physician and one of the three founding fathers of botany, along with Otto Brunfels and Hieronymus Bock .-Biography:...
and GesnerKonrad Gessner was a Swiss naturalist and bibliographer. His five-volume Historiae animalium is considered the beginning of modern zoology, and the flowering plant genus Gesneria is named after him...
, and the Italian Matthiolus. The 1597 and 1633 editions are commonly referred to as Gerard's Herbal
.
The origins of the Great Herball, famous for the detailed descriptions of plants, the folklore contained in the articles and its splendid prose, are somewhat controversial. The Queen's printer
John NortonJohn Norton may refer to:*John Norton, 5th Baron Grantley , British peer and numismatist*John Norton , Victorian Gothic revivalist, remodelled Tyntesfield*John Norton , Olympic medalist*John Norton...
had commissioned a Dr. Priest to prepare an English-language translation of
Rembert DodoensRembert Dodoens was a Flemish physician and botanist, also known under his Latinized name Rembertus Dodonaeus....
' immensely popular herbal. Priest having died before completing the work, Norton asked Gerard to take over. Gerard finished the translation, rearranged the work, and added as-yet-unpublished material of an herbalist named
l'ObelMatthias de L'Obel or Matthaeus Lobelius was born in Lille. He studied medicine in Leuven and Montpellier.He became physician to William the Silent, Prince of Orange, before moving to England and becoming James I's physician and botanist.The plant genus Lobelia and the botanical family Lobeliaceae...
. However, in the herbal Gerard states that Priest's translation had disappeared and that he had written a new book. Modern-day authorities disagree as to the extent of original work in Gerard's herbal.
Gerard's Herbal was later revised by
John GoodyerJohn Goodyer , was a 17th century botanist, who lived in Hampshire, England. He was born in Alton, and evidently received a good education, although it is not known where...
and
Thomas JohnsonTo be distinguished from Thomas Johnson , Professor of Botany at University College, Dublin from 1890 to 1926.Thomas Johnson has been called "The Father of British Field Botany" but has been largely neglected, no doubt largely due to the very scanty records of his life which have...
.
Linnaeus honoured Gerard in the name of the plant genus
GerardiaGerardia L. is a genus of flowering plants in the family Acanthaceae. It was once used as the generic name for the genus Agalinis, but based on the rules of the ICBN it is an illegitimate later homonym of Gerardia L...
.