GADBURY (JOHN), one of the astrological impostors of the seventeenth century, was born at Wheatly near Oxford, Dec. 31, 1627. His father, William, was a farmer of that place, and his mother was a daughter of sir John. Curzon of Waterperry, knt. Our conjuror was first put apprentice to Thomas Nicols, a taylor, in Oxford, but leaving his master in 1644, he went up to London, and became a pupil of the noted William Lilly, under whom he profited so far as to be soon enabled "to set up the trade of almanack-making and fortune-telling for himself." His pen was employed for many years on nativities, almanacks, and prodigies. There is, we believe, a complete collection of his printed works in the new catalogue of the British Museum, and we hope we shall be excused for not transcribing the list. Dodd, who has given an account of him, as a Roman catholic, says that some of his almanacks, reflecting upon the management of state affairs during the time of Oates's plot, brought him into trouble. While other astrologers were content to exercise their art for the benefit of their own country only, Gadbury extended his to a remote part of the globe, as, in 1674, he published his "West India, or Jamaica Almanack" for that year. He collected and published the works of his friend sir George Wharton in 1683, 8vo. His old master Lilly, who quarrelled with him, and against whom he wrote a book called "Anti-Merlinus Anglicus," says he was a "monster of ingratitude," and "a graceless fellow;" which is true, if, according to his account, he had two wives living at one time, and one of them two husbands. Lilly adds, that he went to sea with intention for Barbadoes, but died by the way in his voyage. When this happened we are not told. Lilly died in 1681, and according to Wood, Gadbury was living in 1690. "The Black Life of John Gadbury" was written and published by Partridge in 1693, which might be about the time of his death, but his name, as was usual, appeared long after this in an almanack, similar to that published in his life-time. There was another astrologer, a Job Gadbury, who was taught his art by John, and probably succeeded him in the almanack, and who died in 1715.1

GADDESDEN (JOHN OF), an English physician, who lived in the early part of the fourteenth century, of very

Dodd's Ch. Hist. vol. III.-Granger.-Tatler, 8vo edit. 1806, with notes, vol. II. p. 61, III.537, IV, 257.-Lilly's Life and Times. edit. 1774, p. 52, 55.

extensive and lucrative practice, was the first Englishman who was employed as a physician at court, being appointed to that office by Edward II.: before his time the king's physicians had been exclusively foreigners. The ignorance, superstition, and low quackery, which appear throughout his practice, are painted with much life and humour by Dr. Freind. He came forward as an universal genius, was a philosopher, philologist, and poet, and undertook every thing that lay within the circle of physic and surgery, was skilled in manual operations, very expert in bone-setting, and a great oculist. He also acquaints us with his great skill in physiognomy; and designed to write a treatise of chiromancy. He was a great dealer in secrets, and some he had which were the most secret of secrets, and did miracles. But his chief strength lay in receipts, and without giving himself much trouble in forming a judgment respecting the nature of the case, he seemed to think that, if he could muster up a good number of these, he should be able to encounter any distemper. He seems to have neglected no stratagems, by which he might surprise and impose on the credulity of mankind, and to have been very artful in laying baits for the delicate, the ladies, and the rich. When he was employed in attending the king's son, in the small-pox, in order to shew his skill in inflammatory distempers, he, with a proper formality, and a countenance of much importance, ordered the patient to be wrapped up in scarlet, and every thing about the bed to be of the same colour. This, he says, made him recover without so much as leaving one mark in his face; and he commends it for an excellent mode of curing. Nevertheless this man was praised by Leland, Ovaringius, and others, as a profound philosopher, a skilful physician, and the brightest man of his age.

His only work, which he produced while resident at Merton college, Oxford, is the famous "Rosa Anglica," which comprises the whole practice of physic; collected indeed chiefly from the Arabians, and the moderns who had written in Latin just before him, but enlarged and interspersed with additions from his own experience. Its title is "Rosa Anglica quatuor Libris distincta, de morbis particularibus, de Febribus, de Chirurgia, de Pharmacopœa." Dr. Freind observes, that John seems to have made a colJection of all the receipts he had ever met with or heard of; and that this book affords us a complete history of

what medicines were in use, not only among the physi cians of that time, but among the common people in all parts of England, both in the empirical and superstitious way. Dr. Aikin remarks that the method of producing fresh from salt water by simple distillation (" in an alembic with a gentle heat") is familiarly mentioned by this author, even at so remote a period.

Although devoted to the practice of his profession, he was prebendary of St. Paul's, in the stall of Ealdland. It seems probable from this and other instances, that the procurement of a sinecure place in the church was a method in which the great sometimes paid the services of their physicians. Of his "Rosa Anglica" there are two editions, one in fol. Venice, 1502, and the other in 4to. Aug. Vind. 2 vols. 1595.1

GÆRTNER (JOSEPH), an eminent botanist, was born. at Calw, in the duchy of Wirtemberg, March 12, 1732. His father, physician to the duke of Wirtemberg, and his mother, both died in his early youth. He was at first destined by his surviving relations for the church, and when he disliked that, the law was recommended; but at length, from an early bias towards the study of natural history, he resorted to physic, as most congenial to his disposition, and removed to the university of Gottingen, in the 19th year of his age. Here the lectures of Haller and others instructed him in anatomy, physiology, and botany, but he studied these rather for his own information and amusement, than as a means of advancement in the practice of physic. After this he undertook a tour through Italy, France, and England, in the pursuit of knowledge in botany. On his return he took the degree of M. D. and published an inaugural dissertation on the urinary secretion, after which he devoted two years to the study of mathematics, optics, and mechanics, constructing with his own hands a telescope, as well as a common and solar microscope. In the summer of 1759 he attended a course of botanical lectures at Leyden, under the celebrated Adrian Van Royen. He had for some time acquired the use of the pencil, in which he eminently excelled, and which subsequently proved of the greatest use to him in enabling him to draw the beautiful and accurate figures of

Aikin's Biographical Memoirs of Medicine.-Rees's Cyclopædia. -Freind's Hist. of Physic.

the books he published. Having bestowed great attention upon the obscurer tribes of marine animals and plants, particularly with a view to the mode of propagation of the latter, as well as of other cryptogamic vegetables, he revisited England, and spent some time here, as well in scrutinizing the productions of our extensive and varied. coasts, as in conversing with those able naturalists Ellis, Collinson, Baker, and others, who were assiduously engaged in similar pursuits. He communicated a paper to the royal society on the polype called Urtica marina, and the Actinia of Linnæus, comprehending descriptions and figures of several species, which is printed in the 52d volume of the Philosophical Transactions; and he prepared several essays on the anatomy of fishes, and other obscure matters of animal and vegetable physiology, part of which only has hitherto been made public. Soon afterwards Dr. Gartner became a member of the royal society of London, and of the imperial academy of sciences at Petersburg. In 1768, he was instituted professor of botany and natural history at Petersburg, and about a year afterwards he began to plan and prepare materials for the great work on which his eminent reputation rests, the object of which was the illustration of fruits and seeds for the purposes above-mentioned. His situation at Petersburg, however, seems not to have suited either his health or disposition. After having performed a journey into the Ukraine, in which he collected many new or obscure plants, he resigned his professorship at the end of two years, steadily refusing the pension ordinarily attached to it, and retired in the autumn of 1770 to his native town, where he married. At the end of eight years he found it necessary, for the perfection of his intended work, to re-visit some of the seats of science in which he had formerly studied, in order to re-examine several botanical collections, and to converse again with persons devoted to similar inquiries with his own. Above all, he was anxious to profit by the discoveries of the distinguished voyagers Banks and Solander, who received him with open arms on his arrival at London, in 1778, and, with the liberality which ever distinguished their characters, freely laid before him all their acquisitions, and assisted him with their own observations and discoveries. A new genus was dedicated to Gartner by his illustrious friends in their manuscripts; but this being his own sphenoclea, has been superseded by another and VOL. XV.

a finer plant. He visited Thunberg in his return through Amsterdam, that distinguished botanist and traveller being then lately arrived from Japan; nor were the acquisitions of Gærtner less considerable from this quarter. He further enriched himself from the treasures at Leyden, laid open to him by his old friend Van Royen; and arrived at home laden with spoils destined to enrich his intended publication. Here, however, his labours and his darling pursuits were interrupted by a severe disorder in his eyes, which for many months threatened total blindness; nor was it till after an intermission of four or five years that he was able to resume his studies.

At length he gave to the public the first volume of his long-expected work, "De fructibus et seminibus plantarum," printed at Stutgard in 1788, and containing the essential generic characters, with particular descriptions of the fruit of 500 genera, illustrated by figures of each, admirably drawn by himself, and neatly engraved in 79 quarto plates; a long anatomical and physiological introduction is prefixed, in which he defines and explains the nature of the parts of fructification, especially of the fruit and seed. In this essay he denies the existence of real flowers, and consequently of proper seeds, in fungi, and other cryptogamic vegetables, in which Hedwig and others conceive they had detected the organs of impregnation as well as real seeds. Gærtner considers the latter as gemmæ or buds, and not seeds produced by sexual impregnation. He even denies the celebrated Hedwigian theory of mosses. He changes the name of germen, applied by Linnæus to the rudiments of the fruit in old plants, to the old and erroneous term ovarium. In the detail of his work he often corrects the great Swedish naturalist, with more or less justice, but not always with candour, and changes his names frequently for the worse. In synonyms he is not always exact, copying them, as it appears, from errors of the press occasionally transcribed from other authors, without turning to the books quoted.

In the definition and anatomical elucidation of the parts of the seed, Gærtner is truly excellent; and, notwithstanding some slight defects, his work marks an æra in botanical science, not only directing, but even forcing the attention of botanists to parts which the Linnæan school had too much neglected, but which can never in future be overlooked. The second volume of this immortal work