To those who may object that it is too small, he explains that he will write more fully when he has "travelled diverse shyres in England to learn more of the herbs that grow there." Others may condemn him for writing in English, "for now (say they) every man without any study of necessary artes unto the knowledge of Phisick will become a Phisician ... euery man nay euery old wyfe will presume, not without the mordre of many, to practyse Phisick." To these he succinctly replies, "How many surgianes and apothecaries are there in England which can understand Plini in Latin or Galen and Dioscorides?" The English physicians, he says, rely on the apothecaries, and they in turn on the old wives who gather the herbs. Moreover, since the physicians are not present when their prescriptions are made up, "many a good mā by ignorance is put in jeopardy of his life, or good medecine is marred to the great dishonesty both of the Phisician and of Goddes worthy creatures." All this can be avoided by having a herbal written in English. Dioscorides and Galen, he points out, wrote in their native tongue, Greek. "Dyd Dioscorides and Galen give occasion for every old wyfe to take in hād the practise of Phisick? Did they giue any iust occasion of murther? If they gaue no occasyon unto every old wyfe to practise physike then give I none. If they gave no occasion of murther then gyue I none ... then am I no hynderer wryting unto the English my countremen an English herball."
The second part of Turner's Herbal is dedicated to his old patron, Thomas Lord Wentworth, and the complete work, including the third part, to Queen Elizabeth.[69] In the preface to this last he reminds the queen of a conversation he had had with her in Latin eighteen years before, at the Duke of Somerset's house, when he was physician to that nobleman. It is in this preface also that he criticises the foreign herbalists; though he has learnt much from them, they had much to learn from him, "as their second editions maye testifye." He claims that in the first part of his herbal he taught "the truth of certeyne plants which these above-named writers (Matthiolus, Fuchsius, Tragus and Dodoneus) either knew not at al or ellis erred in them greatlye.... And because I would not be lyke unto a cryer yt cryeth a loste horse in the marketh, and telleth all the markes and tokens that he hath, and yet never sawe the horse, nether coulde knowe the horse if he sawe him: I wente into Italye and into diverse partes of Germany, to knowe and se the herbes my selfe."