Astrologer and physician, born in London, UK. He studied at Cambridge, and in 1640 began to practise astrology and medicine in Spitalfields. In 1649 he published an English translation of the College of Physicians' Pharmacopoeia, A Physical Directory, for which he was virulently lampooned, and in 1653 appeared The English Physician Enlarged, or the Herbal. Both books had an enormous sale.
Nicholas Culpeper (18 October 1616 – 1654 in London) was an English botanist, herbalist, physician, and astrologer.
Life
Son of Nicholas Culpeper (Senior), a clergyman, he studied in Cambridge, and afterwards became apprenticed to an apothecary Edward White.
During the early months of the English Civil War he was accused of witchcraft and the Society of Apothecaries tried rein in his practice. There, in co-operation with the Republican astrologer William Lilley, he wrote the work 'A Prophesy of the White King', which for the first time predicted the king’s death.
Influenced during his apprenticeship by the radical preacher John Goodwin, the 'Red Dragon', who said no authority was above question, Culpeper was a radical republican and opposed to the "closed shop" of medicine enforced by the censors of the College of Physicians. With Latin from his university education, he translated medical and herbal texts such as the London Pharmacoepia from the Latin for his master and then (when the Society of Physicians' police-force, the Censors, were out of action during the Civil War) published this translation to the general public (see Influence of Culpeper's Work below). He followed this up with a work on childbirth and his main work, 'The English Physician', sold at only 3 pence to make it more widely available and sold as far afield as colonial America. It is the most successful non-religious English text ever, and has been in continous print
He believed that medicine was a public asset not a commercial secret, and that nature's medicine was universal and cheap and only physicians' medicines were expensive. He felt the use of Latin and high prices by doctors, lawyers and priests was a conspiracy to keep power and freedom away from the general public, saying "Three kinds of people mainly disease the people - priests, physicians and lawyers - priests disease matters belonging to their souls, physicians disease matters belonging to their bodies, and lawyers disease matters belonging to their estate".
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His Philosophy of Herbalism and Medicine
Culpeper worked to bring medicinal treatments from the mysterious to the comprehensible.
Influence of Culpeper's Work
In a new report by Mike Sajna , research indicates that Culpeper was one of the first translators into English of herbal and medicinal documents derived from an Aztec physician written in Latin. The "Badinus" was the first manuscript to bring New World botanical medicine back to Europe in the 1550s. It was based on the work of an Aztec physician. However, Flannery pointed out, the "Badinus" disappeared, moving from one library to another, until it surfaced in the Vatican in 1929, so it had no effect on the way botanical medicines were used in Europe." "Herbal medicines from the New World did not make a mark on Europe until about 25 years later, in 1577, when a Spanish physician published "Joyful News Out of the New Found World." Although "Joyful News" promised miraculous cures, those cures remained hidden from the general public, locked away in the "official literatures" as it were, according to Flannery, until England's Nicholas Culpepper translated those medical works from the Latin and offered them to the public in [the] 1600's. Culpepper's work helped European botanical medicine cross the Atlantic. However, according to Flannery, it would take American independence and a German to create a system of botanical medicine based on native American plants."
A publication of Culpeper's 1653 translation work appeared in 1770 with the title The English Patient with 369 Medicines Made of English Herbs. The 440 page work reveals that the origin of modern pharmaceuticals began with this work. The origin of Medical use of herbs such as foxglove, from which the heart medication digitalis was purified, is described in detail . One of these works, The Treatise of the Aurum Potabile was published in 1656. The treatise is esentially a very important alchemical work that explains the philosophy behind his whole life and written works, Being a description of the Threefold World;
Examples cited from The English Physician
Herb remedies published in the book :
Anemone - the juyce snuffed up the nose purgeth the head, it clenseth filthy ulcerts, encreaseth milk in Nurses, and outwardly by oyntments helps Leprosies. Bedstraw - stancheth blood; Burdoc or Clot-bur - helps such as spit blood and matter, bruised and mixed with salt and applyed to the place, helps the biting of mad dogs. Cottonweed - boyled in Ly, it keeps the head from Nits and Lice; Dittany - brings away dead children, hastens womens travail, the very smell of it drives away venemous beasts; Fleabane - helps the bitings of venemous beasts. Hellebore - the root of white Hellebore, or sneezwort, being grated & Lovage - cleers the sight, take away redness and Freckles from the Face. Mugwort - an herb appropriate to the foeminine sex; Penyroyal - strengthens women's backs, provokes the Terms, staies vomiting, strengthens the brain (yea the very smell of it), breaks wind, and helps the Vertigo. Savory - winter savory and summer savory both expell wind gallantly, and that (they say) is the reason why they are boyled with Pease and Beans and other such windy things; Wood Bettony - helps the falling sickness, and all headaches comming of cold, procures apetite, helps sour belchings, helps cramps and convulsions, helps the Gout, Kills worms, helps bruises, and cleanseth women after their labor.Beyond this, he also wrote one of the first texts on gynaecology and obstetrics and translated numerous texts into English to the chagrin of more of his contemporaries still. His influence is demonstrated by the existence of a chain of "Culpeper" herb and spice shops in the United Kingdom, India and beyond, and by the continued popularity of his remedies among New Age and alternative holistic homeopathy medicine practitioners.
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