<span>"Gerard, a Barber-Surgeon, employed his energies chiefly upon horticulture and for twenty years had a renowned garden in Holborn, the fashionable suburb of London. Gerard's reputation rests on his work Generall Historie of Plants. Most of the 1800 woodcuts used were taken from earlier herbals, but the one illustrating the potato plant is perhaps the first figure of the plant ever issued. We cannot accept Gerard's as that of a scientist, for, as Arber states, his 'account of the "Goose tree"... "tree bearing Geese," removes what little respect one may have for him as a scientist, not indeed because he held and absurd belief, which was widely current at that time, but because he described it, with utter disregard of truth, as confirmed by his own observation'. Gerard states, "But what our eies have seen and hands have touched, we shall declare". He than relates "that trees actually bearing shells, which open and hatch out </span><span>barnacle geese occur in the northern part of Scotland". Many copies of Gerard's Herbal were treasured in English homes for well over two hundred years- as a guide for folk medicine. The "virtues" of the plants made this the "Home Book of Medicine" for every possible ailment, as "Kings evil", "casting for the dead child", "shortness of breath", "dissolving clotted blood", "cooling the heat of the inward partes", and even "baldness". The printer of this work, John Norton, alderman, Printer to Queen Elizabeth in Latin and Greek, was also the first to establish a press at the college of Eton. Norton had previously commissioned a Dr. Priest to translate into English the great botanical work of Dodoens published in 1583, but Priest died before the work was finished. Gerard adopted Priest's work, re-arranged and completed it, and published it dishonestly as is own." (Ege, Otto F.)Original Leaves from Famous BooksOtto F. Ege Collection</span>