To those who may object that it is too small, he explains that he will
write more fully when he has "travelled diverse shyres in England to
learn more of the herbs that grow there." Others may condemn him for
writing in English, "for now (say they) every man without any study of
necessary artes unto the knowledge of Phisick will become a Phisician
... euery man nay euery old wyfe will presume, not without the mordre
of many, to practyse Phisick." To these he succinctly replies, "How
many surgianes and apothecaries are there in England which can
understand Plini in Latin or Galen and Dioscorides?" The English
physicians, he says, rely on the apothecaries, and they in turn on the
old wives who gather the herbs. Moreover, since the physicians are not
present when their prescriptions are made up, "many a good mā by
ignorance is put in jeopardy of his life, or good medecine is marred
to the great dishonesty both of the Phisician and of Goddes worthy
creatures." All this can be avoided by having a herbal written in
English. Dioscorides and Galen, he points out, wrote in their native
tongue, Greek. "Dyd Dioscorides and Galen give occasion for every old
wyfe to take in hād the practise of Phisick? Did they giue any iust
occasion of murther? If they gaue no occasyon unto every old wyfe to
practise physike then give I none. If they gave no occasion of murther
then gyue I none ... then am I no hynderer wryting unto the English my
countremen an English herball."
The second part of Turner's Herbal is dedicated to his old patron,
Thomas Lord Wentworth, and the complete work, including the third
part, to Queen Elizabeth.[69] In the preface to this last he reminds
the queen of a conversation he had had with her in Latin eighteen
years before, at the Duke of Somerset's house, when he was physician
to that nobleman. It is in this preface also that he criticises the
foreign herbalists; though he has learnt much from them, they had much
to learn from him, "as their second editions maye testifye." He claims
that in the first part of his herbal he taught "the truth of certeyne
plants which these above-named writers (Matthiolus, Fuchsius, Tragus
and Dodoneus) either knew not at al or ellis erred in them
greatlye.... And because I would not be lyke unto a cryer yt cryeth a
loste horse in the marketh, and telleth all the markes and tokens that
he hath, and yet never sawe the horse, nether coulde knowe the horse
if he sawe him: I wente into Italye and into diverse partes of
Germany, to knowe and se the herbes my selfe."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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