His medical works, alongside those of John of Gaddesden, "formed part of the core curriculum that underpinned the practice of medicine for the next 400 years".
It is known that he studied at Western Europe's first and foremost school of medicine, the Schola Medica Salernitana at Salerno, Italy, most probably under the famed surgeon, Roger of Parma.
It is thought that he spent the remainder of his life on the continent, gaining the soubriquet Gilbert the Englishman from his land of origin.
The work, running to seven books, is an attempt to provide a comprehensive encyclopedia of medical and surgical knowledge as it existed in his day.
[7] The gynecological and obstetrical portions of that translation were soon excerpted and circulated widely as an independent text known in modern scholarship as The Sickness of Women.