ABSTRACT
In John Gerard’s Herball, the last entry under the virtues “Of water Dockes”— sometimes called “bastarde rubarbe,” “garden Patience,” or “bloudwort”—is a long one. In establishing the efficacy of the herbs in helping patients to “cure” the ague, Gerard cites not only his own experience but also the results of the “notable experiment” of “one Iohn Bennet, a chirurgion of Maidstone in Kent,” a man whom he calls “as slenderly learned as my selfe.” After relating Bennet’s “blunt” (though successful) “attempt” at finding a cure, Gerard expresses the hope that Bennet’s coarse success may motivate those with “greater iudgement in the faculties of plants, to seeke farther into their nature then any of the auncients haue done: and none fitter then the learned phisitions of the Colledge of London; where are many singularly well learned, and experienced in naturall things.”1
