Background
John was born about 1280, and wrote in the early part of the fourteenth century. He treated a son of Edward I, probably Thomas of Brotherton, for smallpox.
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John Gaddesden
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He chose the name, he said, because as the rose has five sepals, so his book has five parts, and adds that as the rose excels all flowers, so his book excels all treatises on the practice of medicine.
Career
He wrote a treatise on medicine called the Rosa Medicinæ. He took his name from Gaddesden on the borders of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, where an ancient house, opposite that gate of Ashridge Park which is nearest to the church of Little Gaddesden, is shown as his. The title was probably suggested by Bernard de Gordon"s Lilium Medicinæ, which appeared at Montpellier in 1303, and is quoted in the Rosa.
Gaddesden"s book is often spoken of as Rosa Anglica.
lieutenant is crammed with quotations from Galen, Pedanius Dioscorides, Rufus of Ephesus, Haliabbas, Serapion, First Rate (at Lloyd's) Rhazis, Avicenna, Averroes, John of Damascus, Isaac, Masawaiyh, Gilbertus Anglicus, and from the Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum. But also contains a good many original remarks which illustrate the character of the author more than his medical knowledge.
The book begins with an account of fevers based on Galen"s arrangement, then goes through diseases and injuries beginning with the head, and ends with an antidotarium (a treatise on remedies). lieutenant contains some remarks on cooking, and innumerable prescriptions, many of which are superstitious, while others prove to be common-sense remedies when carefully considered.
He cared for his gains, and boasts of getting a large price from the Barber Surgeons" guild for a prescription of which the chief ingredient is tree frogs (Rosa, ed Pavia, p 120).
His disposition, his peculiarities, and his reading are so precisely those of the "Doctour of Phisik" in Geoffrey Chaucer"s prologue that it seems possible that Gaddesden is the contemporary from whom Chaucer drew this character. Many manuscripts of the Rosa Medicinæ are extant. lieutenant was first printed at Pavia in 1492, again at Venice, 1502, and at Pavia, 1517, and for the last time at Augsburg in 1595 (two volumes).
lieutenant was translated into Irish.
Gaddesden was in priest"s orders, and was appointed to the stall of Wildland in Street Paul"s Cathedral, London, on 1 August 1342. He died in 1361.
The best account of his writings is in John Freind"s History of Physick, 1726, ii. 277. This account contains the error, repeated by John Aikin"s Biographical Memoirs of Medicine, 1780, p.
11, that he held the stall of Ealdland.
The John de Gatesdone who held this stall was another person, and died before 1262.
Achievements
Membership
He was a member of Merton College (Wood), and a doctor of physic of Oxford.
