of Gilbert, and are forced to content ourselves with the few facts
to be gleaned from the scanty biographies of early writers and the
inferences drawn from the pages of the Compendium itself. The date
and place of his birth and death, and even the field of his medical
activities are equally unknown. Bale, Pits and Leland, the earliest
English biographers, tell us that Gilbert, after the completion of
his studies in England, proceeded to the Continent to enlarge his
education, and finally became physician to the great Justiciar, Hubert
Walter, archbishop of Canterbury, who died in the year 1205. This
would place him under the reign of King John, in the early part of the
thirteenth century.

Dr. John Freind, however, the famous English physician and medical
historian (1725), observing that Gilbert quotes the Arabian
philosopher Averroës (who died in 1198), and believing that he also
quotes a work of Roger Bacon and the surgical writings of Theodorius
(Borgognoni) of Cervia (1266), was inclined to fix his period in the
latter half of the thirteenth century, probably under the reign of
Edward I. Most of the later historians of medicine have followed the
views of Freind. Thus Eloy adopts the date 1272, Sprengel gives 1290,
Haeser the same date, Hirsch says Gilbert lived towards the close of
the thirteenth century, Baas adopts the figures 1290, etc.

The most recent biographers of Gilbert, however, Mr. C.L.
Kingsford[1], and the late Dr. Joseph Frank Payne[2], after an
apparently careful and independent investigation of his life, have
reached conclusions which vary materially from each other and from
those of the historians mentioned. Mr. Kingsford fixes the date of
Gilbert at about 1250, while Dr. Payne reverts to the views of Bale
and Pits and suggests as approximate figures for the birth and death