The original of Chaucer’s “Doctour of Phisike” has been sometimes supposed to have been the well-known John of Gaddesden, physician to Edward II, Professor of Medicine at Merton College, Oxford, a Prebendary of the Church, and the author of “Rosa Anglicana.” This work, although full of absurdities and crude ideas of medicine and pharmacy, became the popular medical treatise in England, was translated into several European languages, and reprinted many times in this country during the two hundred years which followed its first appearance. The author named it the Rose, he says, because, as the rose has five sepals, his book is divided into five parts; and as the rose excels all other flowers, so his book is superior to all other treatises on medicine. It was probably published between 1310 and 1320. John of Gaddesden’s work well illustrates the pharmacy of the period, for he was great on drugs. He taught that aqua vitæ (brandy) was a polychrest, or complete remedy; that swines’ excrement was a sovereign cure for hæmorrhage; that a sponge steeped in a mixture of vinegar, roses, wormwood, and rain-water, and laid on the stomach, would check vomiting and purging; that toothache and other pains might be cured by saying a Paternoster and an Ave for the souls of the father and mother of St. Phillip; a boar’s bladder, taken when full of urine and dried in an oven, is recommended as a cure for epilepsy; a wine of fennel and parsley for blindness; and a mixture of whatever herbs came into his mind--for example, “apium, petroselinum, endive, scolopendron, chicory, liver-wort, scariola, lettuce, maidenhair, plantain, ivory shavings, sandal wood, violets, and vinegar”--is ordered as a digestive drink. Add to such senseless recipes as these a number of equally unintelligent charms, and a fair idea of the condition of medical science in England in the fourteenth century is obtained. It does not compare at all favourably with the condition to which the Arabs in Spain had elevated the art two and three hundred years before. Bernard of Gordon, who wrote from Montpellier, but is believed to have been a Scotchman, was the author of the “Lilium Medicinæ,” published about 1307 or 1309. The work was known to John of Gaddesden, for he quotes from it. Perhaps he had it in his mind when he observed that the rose excels all other flowers. Mainly it was a compilation from Arabic writers with the addition of many scholastic subtleties and astrological reveries. It is noticeable in this author and in John of Gaddesden how careful both are to distinguish between the treatment of the rich and the poor. The latter, for example, states that dropsy can be cured by spikenard, but he advises practitioners never to give this costly medicine without first receiving pay for it. Gordon recommends for a poor person’s cough that he should be ordered to hold his breath frequently during the day for as long as possible, and if that does not cure he is to breathe fire.