Contemplating Culpeper
Anyone who casually studies herbs knows the name of Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654) a 17th-century astrologer, apothecary and translator. In 1652 he authored The English Physitian or an Astrologo-physical Discourse of the Vulgar Herbs of this Nation, published in London. It is the best-selling herb book of all time, in print in one form for 365 years. I have another new edition, which begs the question, why is this archaic mix of astrology and domestic medicine, which biographer Benjamin Woolley describes as “irreverent, funny, bawdy, and angry vulgar,” the best-selling herbal of all time?
Part of the answer lies in the price. Culpeper had managed to condense two major herbals of his day, the 1755-page Theatrum Botanicum of John Parkinson, and the 1633 Gerard’s Herbal (1722 pages) down to a pocket-sized book of 324 pages, which was 150 times cheaper than Parkinson’s massive tome. Culpeper brought herbal medicine to the common people in the form of an affordable book.
Another factor leading to Culpeper’s popularity is the politics of the times. This year, 2018, is the 500th anniversary the Royal College of Physicians in London (chartered by edict of Henry the VIII in 1518). Nearly a century later at the beginning of the reign of James I, the King giving control of the medical profession(s) to the Royal College along with the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries established in 1617. One product was the first Pharmacopoeia Londinensis [now the British Pharmacopeia], published in Latin in 1618, the 400th anniversary of which we mark in 2018.
Culpeper fought on the side of Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War(s). He was wounded in the chest, an injury that ultimately led to his death in 1654 at age 37. With Cromwell’s success in the Civil Wars(s) and establishing the Commonwealth in 1649, came a reckoning of medical knowledge controlled then by the medical elite. Culpeper hastily prepared a translation of the 1618 Pharmacopoeia Londinensis, laying bare to the common people in English what was hidden from them in Latin – A physicall directory, or, A translation of the London dispensatory made by the Colledge of Physicians in London … by Nich. Culpeper, Gent., published in 1649.
This seminal publishing event in the face of a populist uprising would lead to the concept of “teaching every man and woman to be their own doctor,” exploited by and seized upon by Culpeper, accentuating the 500-hundred-year-long schism between herbalism and medicine which still exists today. This is Culpeper’s overarching legacy.