According to the introduction it was compiled from the works of "many noble doctoures and experte maysters in medecines, as Auicenna, Pandecta, Constantinus, Wilhelmus, Platearius, Rabbi Moyses, Johannes Mesue, Haly, Albertus, Bartholomeus and more other." But with the exception of the preface the _Grete Herball_ is a translation of the well-known French herbal, _Le Grant Herbier_. Until about 1886 _Le Grant Herbier_ was supposed to be a translation of the _Herbarius zu Teutsch_, published at Mainz in 1485, or of the _Ortus Sanitatis_, printed also at Mainz in 1491.[53] The _Herbarius zu Teutsch_, which was probably compiled by a Frankfort physician, is a fine herbal beautifully illustrated, and the later _Ortus Sanitatis_ is by some authorities supposed to be a Latin translation of it. To judge from the preface to the German Herbarius it was a labour of love, undertaken by a man who apparently was possessed of ample wealth and leisure; for in his preface he tells us that he "caused this praiseworthy work to be begun by a Master learned in physic," and then, finding that as many of the herbs did not grow in his native land he could not draw them "with their true colours and form," he left the work unfinished and journeyed through many lands--Italy, Croatia, Albania, Dalmatia, Greece, Corfu, Candia, Rhodes, Cyprus, the Holy Land, Arabia, Babylonia and Egypt. He was accompanied by "a painter ready of wit and cunning and subtle of hand," and was thus able to have the herbs "truly drawn." The book he compiled on his return was long regarded as the original of the French herbal, _Le Grant Herbier_, but in 1866 Professor Giulio Camus found two fifteenth-century manuscripts in the Biblioteca Estense at Modena, one the Latin work commonly known from the opening words as _Circa Instans_, and the other a French translation of the same manuscript. It was always supposed by medical historians that the _Circa Instans_ was written by Matthaeus Platearius of Salerno in the twelfth century, but in Professor Camus's memoir, _L'Opéra Saleritana "Circa Instans" ed il testo primitivo del "Grand Herbier in Francoys" secundo duo codici del secolo XV conservati nella Regia Biblioteca Estense_, there are reproduced the French verses in which occurs the line, "Il a esté escript Millccc cinquante et huit," and Mr. H. M. Barlow[54] supports the deduction that _Circa Instans_ was not written by a Salernitan physician, but by a writer described in the verses as "Bartholomaeus minid' senis" in 1458. _Le Grant Herbier_, of which the English _Grete Herball_ is a translation, is a version of the French manuscript translation of _Circa Instans_, and therefore, as _Circa Instans_ is older than either the _Herbarius zu Teutsch_ or the Latin _Ortus Sanitatis_, it would seem that it is the real original of our _Grete Herball_. The preface to the _Grete Herball_, however, bears a strong resemblance to that of the German Herbarius, of which I quote a part from Dr.