Rembert Dodoens(1517–85) and John Gerard (1545–1612)
Rembert Dodoens was a Flemish botanist and physician. He became a court physician, and in 1582 was appointed Professor of Medicine at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
He had become interested in plants as a young man and published De frugum historia in 1552, then his illustrated herbal Cruydeboeck in 1554, which had a particular focus on medicinal herbs.45 It was translated into several languages, including English in 1578 (as A niewe herball or Historie of plantes …) and became an ‘instant classic’ – it was the most translated book after the Bible in that era, such was its popularity.46It had also come to the attention of John Gerard, an English herbalist and barber-surgeon. Gerard lived in Holborn and cared much for his large garden, which became quite well known. He became superintendent of the gardens of William Cecil in 1577, and in 1586 he became curator of the Physic Garden at the College of Physicians. He gradually built up his reputation as a herbalist, and in 1596 produced a Catalogue of Plants, a list of over 1,000 rare plants grown in his Holborn garden. About this time, he was also approached by the publisher John Norton to make an English translation of Dodoens’ Stirpium historiae pemptades sex, which was a 1583 much-revised Latin translation of the Cruydeboeck. Gerard, despite his enthusiasm for plants, was not an academic botanist, nor was he Norton’s first choice for the translation: this was originally given to Dr Robert Priest, who had since died. Gerard completed the work, and the new book was entitled Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes and was published in 1597.47 There were several incidences of apparent plagiarism: firstly, the translation seems to be mainly Priest’s work, even though Gerard claimed the work as his own; secondly, Matthias de l’Obel, a Flemish botanist, physician and friend, had some of his own work re-used by Gerard; and thirdly, from the German botanist Jacobus Theodorus. Thomas Johnson, an English botanist who revised, amended and expanded the text in his 1633 edition of the Herball, wrote a preface which included clarification of some of these misdemeanours.
Most of the major spices could now be found in such botanical literature, though were very resonant of the exotic. About a century after the ‘discovery’ of chili by Columbus, its origin was still apparently steeped in mystery and called ‘Ginnie or Indian Pepper’ by Gerard: ‘These plants are brought from foreign countries, as Ginnie, India, and those parts, into Spaine and Italy’, and:
Ginnie pepper hath the taste of pepper, but not the power or vertue, notwithstanding in Spaine and sundrie parts of the Indies they do use to dresse their meate therewith, as we do with Calecute pepper: but (saith my author) it hath in it a malitious qualitie whereby it is an enimie to the liver & other of the entrails …
Regardless of the issues about plagiarism (which was rife in this era), the Herball became extremely popular and was a hugely important reference for the next two centuries.