THE CHELSEA " PHYSICKE GARDEN " 



of herbes will always grow green, and never wither, so long as 

 Discorides is held in mind among these mortal wights." The work 

 appeared in two parts ; the first being published in 1551 part 

 the second, ten or twelve years later. According to the practice 

 in those days, the title set forth in prolix detail the contents of 

 the book, and the author describes it as "a new Herbale 

 wherein are conteyned the names of herbes in Greke, Latin, 

 Englishe, Duche, and Frenche, and in the apothecaries and 

 herbaries latin, with the properties, 'degrees and natural place of 

 the same, gathered and made by William Turner, Physician to the 

 Duke of Somerset." 



The second part included " divers confutationes of no small 

 errours that men of no small learning have committed in the in- 

 treatinge of herbes of late years." These two parts, to which were 

 added the names of herbs found "after the old writer's tyme," 

 were reprinted, and dedicated to " the surgeon's company of 

 London and all practitioners of surgery throughout England," and 

 were dated from Wells in 1564, the year of Turner's final expulsion 

 from his deanery. An edition in the British Museum, dated from 

 his " house at London the 5th day of Marche, 1568," four months 

 only before his death, has a long and fulsome dedication to Queen 

 Elizabeth ("your most excellent sublimitie," he calls her), in 

 which he extravagantly praises her Latin. Turner is described as 

 " a racy writer, a keen controversialist, and a man of undoubted 

 learning." He was a sound and eager botanist. Before his time, 

 as he himself says, botany was so much neglected that, when 

 collecting plants for the skeleton of his work, he could not find a 

 physician capable of telling him the names, in Greek, Latin, or 

 English, of any of them. 



Turner cannot claim the credit of having founded the first 

 medicinal herb garden in England ; that distinction belongs to 

 John Gerarde, who also, some thirty years after Turner's death, 

 published an admirably illustrated " Herbal or Historic of Plants," 

 but Turner, who was superintendent of the Duke of Somerset's 

 new garden at Sion (of which an account has been given already), 

 had ample opportunity to encourage the growth, and test the 

 virtues, of all the simples with which he was acquainted, and to 

 cultivate many uncommon specimens. Owing to the unsettled 

 circumstances of Turner's life and the diversity of his pursuits, 



115 8* 



