getting a large price from the Barber surgeons' guild for a prescription of which the chief ingredient is tree frogs (Rosa, ed. Pavia, p. 120). His disposition, his peculiarities, and his reading are so precisely those of the "Doctour of Phisik" in Geoffrey Chaucer's prologue that it seems possible that Gaddesden is the contemporary from whom Chaucer drew this character. Many manuscripts of the Rosa Medicinæ are extant. It was first printed at Pavia in 1492, again at Venice, 1502, and at Pavia, 1517, and for the last time at Augsburg in 1595 (two volumes). It was translated into Irish. Gaddesden was in priest's orders, and was appointed to the stall of Wildland in St Paul's Cathedral, London, on 1 Aug 1342. He died in 1361. The best account of his writings is in John Freind's History of Physick, 1726, ii. 277. This account contains the error, repeated by John Aikin's Biographical Memoirs of Medicine, 1780, p. 11, that he held the stall of Ealdland. The John de Gatesdone who held this stall was another person, and died before 1262. References 1280s births 1361 deaths 13th-century English medical doctors 13th-century English Roman Catholic theologians 13th-century English writers 14th-century English medical doctors 14th-century English Roman Catholic theologians 14th-century English writers Alumni of Merton College, Oxford Fellows of Merton College, Oxford People from Little Gaddesden Year of birth uncertain