Gilbert Knowles

Gilbert Knowles (1667–1734) was an English Roman Catholic priest, botanist and poet.[1]

He is known only for his Materia Medica Botanica (London, 1723, 4to),[2] this work is dedicated to Dr. Richard Mead, and consists of 7355 Latin hexameters. Four hundred plants of the materia medica are described and their uses in medicine explained. Various episodes, some of which may yet be read with pleasure, are interwoven with the subject for the sake of ornament. Knowles alludes to his verses as being written "rudi Minerva", and evidently was a close student both of Virgil's style and matter.[3]

A portrait engraved in mezzotint by John Faber Junior from a painting by T. Murray, subscribed "Mr. Gilbert Knowles, ætatis 49, anno 1723," is prefixed to the volume.[3]

References
  1. McConnell, Anita. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/15767. Missing or empty |title= (help) (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. Materia medica botanica; in qua symptomata variorum morborum describuntur, herbaeque iisdem depellendis aptissimæ apponuntur, tam quæ in nostris hic sponte oris, quam quæ in aliis orbis regionibus nascuntur: NLA catalogue record
  3. Watkins, Morgan George (1892). "Knowles, Gilbert" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. 31. London: Smith, Elder & Co. citing: [Knowles's book in Brit. Mus.; Nichols's Lit. Illustrations, viii. 442–3; Pulteney's Sketches of the Progress of Botany, i. 283.]
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Knowles, Gilbert". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

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