Nicholas Culpeper

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Nicholas Culpeper
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Nicholas Culpeper

Nicholas Culpeper (18 October 1616 – 1654 in London) was an English botanist, herbalist, physician, and astrologer. His published books, The English Physitian (1652) and the Complete Herbal (1653), contain a rich store of pharmaceutical and herbal knowledge.

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[edit] Life

Son of Nicholas Culpeper (Senior), a clergyman, he studied in Cambridge, and afterwards became apprenticed to an apothecary Edward White. After seven years his master absconded with the money paid for his indenture, and soon afterwards his mother died of breast cancer. A little later he married Alice Field, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, which allowed him to set up a pharmacy in the Halfway House in Spitalfields, London, outside the authority of the City of London. This was well-timed, since by the early 1640s medical facilities in London were at breaking point. Arguing that "no man deserved to starve to pay an insulting, insolent physician", and getting his herb supplies locally and from country areas of London (eg Finsbury Fields, Bow, Hampstead), he could afford not to charge fees. This, and a willingness (unusual for the time) to see patients in person rather than simply examining their urine (in his opinion, "as much piss as the Thames might hold" did not help in diagnosis), he saw forty people on some mornings. He also used astrology to explain the qualities of herbs and for diagnosis.

During the early months of the English Civil War he was accused of witchcraft and the Society of Apothecaries tried to rein in his practice. Alienated and radicalised, in August 1643, he joined the Trained Bands (the only Parliamentary infantry with proper training at the start of the war) and fought at the First Battle of Newbury. There he carried out battlefield surgery and himself sustained a serious chest injury from which he never recovered and was taken back to London. 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 continuous 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".

He died of tuberculosis on 10th January 1654 at the young age of 38. Only one of his eight children, Mary, survived to adulthood.

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[edit] His Philosophy of Herbalism and Medicine

Culpeper worked to bring medicinal treatments from the mysterious to the comprehensible. His philosophy was to teach the common folk to minister to themselves by providing them with the tools and knowledge for self health. His mind and ambition was to reform the whole system of medicine by being an innovative questioner paving the way for new thoughts and principles contrary to established traditions. The systematization of the use of herbals by Culpeper was a key development in the evolution of modern pharmaceuticals, most of which originally had herbal origins.[1].

[edit] Influence of Culpeper's Work

In a new report by Mike Sajna [2], 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. At a C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society Lecture in 1997, Michael Flannery said that:

"By the time Europeans arrived in the Americas, they possessed a long list of medicinal plants. They also began looking for new plants to use in medicine. 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." Using plants from the Americas, it promised cures for ailments that until then were incurable."
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.
Many an early American colonist, armed no doubt with his trusty Culpepper volume or volumes, actually introduced to this continent a number of medicinal species native to mother England," Flannery pointed out.
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." [3]

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 [4].

William Warren-Davis, a naturopath, explains that:

"As a powerful testament to his scholarly nature, his widow wrote: "My husband left 79 books of his own making and translating in my hands." One of these works, The Treatise of the Aurum Potabile was published in 1656. This in many ways is the most remarkable of his works. The treatise is essentially a very important alchemical work that explains the philosophy behind his whole life and written works, Being a description of the Threefold World; elementary, celestial, intellectual, containing, the knowledge necessary to the study of Hermetic Philosophy. It sets out how the study of elements and planets in true philosophy can lead to an unfolding of the Christ principle within, or as Culpepper puts it in his symbolic ideas, the attainment of "drinkable Gold". It is a reflection of the religious uncertainties of his age that he wrote about his inner experience using alchemical imagery and left the treatise for posthumous publication."

[edit] Examples cited from The English Physician

Herb remedies published in the book[5] :

  • 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; boyled in oyl is good to annoynt a weary traveller; inwardly it provokes lust.
  • 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. It expels wind, easeth paines of the teeth, strengthens the back...being taken inwardly.
  • Cottonweed - boyled in Ly, it keeps the head from Nits and Lice; being laid among Cloaths, it Keeps them safe from Moths; taken in a Tobacco-pipe it helps Coughs of the Lunges, and vehement headaches.
  • Dittany - brings away dead children, hastens womens travail, the very smell of it drives away venomous beasts; it's an admirable remedy against wounds made with poysoned weapons; it draws out splinters, broken bones, etc.
  • Fleabane - helps the bitings of venomous beasts. It being burnt, the smoke of it kills as Gnats and Fleas in the chamber. It is dangerous for women with child.
  • Hellebore - the root of white Hellebore, or sneezwort, being grated & snuffed up the nose, causeth sneezing, Kill Rats and Mice, being mixed with their meat. Doctor Bright commends it for such as are mad through melancholly. If you use it for sneezing, let your head and neck be wrapped hot for fear of physicianching cold.
  • Lovage - cleers the sight, take away redness and Freckles from the Face.
  • Mugwort - an herb appropriate to the foeminine sex; it brings down the terms, brings away birth and afterbirth, easeth pains in the matrix.
  • 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 expel wind gallantly, and that (they say) is the reason why they are boyled with Pease and Beans and other such windy things; 'tis a good fashion and pitty it should be left.
  • Wood Bettony - helps the falling sickness, and all headaches coming of cold, procures apetite, helps sour belchings, helps cramps and convulsions, helps the Gout, Kills worms, helps bruises, and cleanseth women after their labor.

See List of plants in The English Physitian (1652 book)

[edit] Anecdotes

Culpeper was a radical, though by no means the quack that his contemporaries made him out to be. In fact, he had angered his fellow physicians by condemning their greed, unwillingness to adapt to new knowledge, and 'toxic' remedies along with their practice of blood-letting. The Society of Apothecaries were similarly incensed by the fact that he suggested cheap herbal remedies as opposed to their expensive concoctions. Nonetheless, Culpeper was keen on astrology, a fact used against him by his opponents.[6]

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.[7]

[edit] List of Works

  • A Physical Directory, or a Translation of the London Directory (1649) - translation of the Pharmacopoeia Londonesis of the Royal College of Physicians.
  • Directory for Midwives (1651)
  • Semeiotics Uranica, or (An Astrological Judgement of Diseases) (1651)
  • Catastrophe Magnatum or (The Fall of Monarchy) (1652)
  • The English Physitian (1652)
  • The Complete Herbal (1653)
  • A Treatise on Aururn Potabile (1656)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ see also| ebookcdrom.com/Pharmacology/The_English_Physician, in the References
  2. ^ Mike Sajna, Herbs have a place in modern medicine, lecturer says, in University Times: Vomue 30, Number 4, October 9, 1997, University of Pittsburgh, USA.
  3. ^ see Sajna article, University Times,...9th October, 1997
  4. ^ see ebookcdrom.com/Pharmacology/The_English_Physician, in the References
  5. ^ see also, ebookcdrom.com/Pharmacology/The_English_Physician, in the References once again
  6. ^ ebooks.com commentary, quoted above.
  7. ^ another quote from the ebooks.com commentary, quoted above.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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