J. Edward Hutson is a retired medical practitioner, and member of the editorial board of Family Health magazine, Edmonton, Canada. He has also written numerous articles for medical journals.

"This volume will provide a treasury of source material for the study of medical history in the Caribbean. It comes 250 years after Hughes, Hillary, Moseley and Grainger were first published, yet so much of their writing resonates today. We in the University of the West Indies, and students of medical history everywhere, must be grateful to Dr Hutson, who, like Dr Grainger before him, has taken 'liberal pains in the Notes... to enlarge knowledge of the medicinal... plants of the West Indies'." - Henry S. Fraser, University of the West Indies, Barbados