Nicholas Culpeper

Nicholas Culpeper esq. by Richard Gaywood, British Library

Nicholas Culpeper (born October 18, 1616, presumably in Ockley , † January 10, 1654 in Spitalfields , London) was an English pharmacist, doctor and astrologer.

Life

Culpeper was the son of the clergyman of the same name, who came from a noble family, and of Mary Attersole, the daughter of a clergyman. He was baptized on October 24, 1616 in St. Margaret's Church in the village of Ockley between Dorking and Horsham , Surrey , where his father was the principal, and is believed to have been born here. His father died shortly before or after he was born, so his mother had to leave the rectory and move in with her father, William Attersole, a strict Puritan who was rector in Isfield , Surrey.

In 1632 his mother financed his studies in Cambridge . He fell in love there in 1634 with a young woman from a good family, with whom he wanted to run away, but she was struck by lightning. Thereupon he left Cambridge and began an apprenticeship as a pharmacist with a Mr. White near Temple Bar in London. However, this went bankrupt, and Culpeper switched to Francis Drake on Threadneedle Street. Drake died in February 1639, and Culpeper and his former colleague Samuel Leadbetter founded their own pharmacy in Spitalfields next to the Red Lion restaurant between Islington and Stepney . Since the pharmacy was outside the city ​​walls , it was not under the supervision of the College of Physicians . Culpeper advised the poor free of charge. In his spare time, Culpeper studied astrology , which had interested him since he was a child, and medicine. He had a good knowledge of the works of Galen , Hippocrates and Avicenna .

His mother died that same year, and his grandfather a year later. Since he was disappointed that Culpeper had not entered the clergy, he left him only 40 shillings .

In 1640 he married Alice Field (* 1625). With her dowry he was able to build a house on Red Lion Street in Spitalfields. They had seven children, of whom only the daughter Maria survived her father. On December 17, 1642, Culpeper was charged with witchcraft , but acquitted. In 1643 the Society of Pharmacists tried to get his colleague Leadbetter to fire Culpeper because he did not have a license.

In August 1643, Culpeper took part on the Republican side in the first Battle of Newbury of the English Civil War, where he was wounded in the chest by a musket shot. In the preface to Complete Herbal , he emphasizes that his own illness led him to regard health as the greatest good and to examine the nature of the remedies more closely. He died of tuberculosis or the long-term effects of his wound (he was also a heavy smoker) in his house in Spitalfields and was buried in the cemetery of Bethlem Hospital there.

Works

Culpeper wrote numerous medical works. He believed in the influence of the stars on the human body and that the world was made up of opposing elements. Diseases progressed differently depending on the level of the stars. To cure a disease, the first thing to do was to find out which planet was causing the disease. Then it was necessary to consider which part of the body was affected and whether it was meat, bones, blood or viscera, and which planet this part of the body was under. So the disease could be fought with a plant that was subordinate to the opposite planet:

• Diseases of the sun and moon by Saturn
• Diseases of Mercury from Jupiter
• Diseases of Venus by Mars
• Diseases of Mars by Venus
• Diseases of Jupiter by Mercury
• Diseases of Saturn from the sun and moon

In addition, diseases could be cured through sympathy , with each planet healing its own diseases:

• Sun and moon eyes,
• Venus the genital organs,
• Mars the bile,
• Jupiter the liver,
• Saturn the bile.

Culpeper's works, especially Complete Herbal , have been illegally reprinted many times, a sign of their popularity. Culpeper relied on his own judgment and reason rather than on the authority of ancient authors. By personally examining patients rather than just relying on urine samples, Culpepper innovated the medicine of his time. He was particularly interested in how and why drugs were effective, and did not want to rely solely on the works of ancient authors. "I cannot build my faith upon Author's words, nor believe a thing because they say it, and could wish every body were of my mind in this, - to labor to be able to give a reason for every thing they say or do."

Works

Translations

• A Physical Directory, or a Translation of the London Dispensatory 1649, a translation of the Pharmacopoeia Londonesis of the Royal College of Physicians.
• The London Dispensatory, 1653 (Pharmacopoeia Londinensis)

Medical works

• Directory for Midwives, 1651
• Semiotica Uranica or an Astrological Judgment of Diseases, 1651
• The English Physitian and Family Dispensatory. An astro-physical discourse of the human virtues in the body of man; both principal and administering, 1652
• The complete Herbal and English Physician enlarged, being an astro-physical discourse of the common herbs of the nation; containing a complete Method or Practice of Physic, whereby a Man may preserve his Body in Health, or cure himself when sick, with such things only as grow in England, they being most fit for English Constitution, 1653
• Astrological Judgment of Diseases from the Decumbiture of the Sick, 1655
• A Treatise on Aurum Potabile, 1656

Political works

• Catastrophe Magnatum or The Fall of Monarchy, 1652
• with William Lilly: A Prophesy of the White King.

swell

• Nicholas Culpeper: Culpeper's Complete Herbal. A book of remedies for ancient ills. Ware, Wordsworth 1995, foreword.
• Olav Thulesius, Nicholas Culpeper: English Physician and Astrologer. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992.
• Patrick Curry: Culpeper, Nicholas (1616–1654) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 23 Aug 2016

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Patrick Curry: Culpeper, Nicholas (1616–1654) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 23 Aug 2016
2. ↑ Nicholas Culpeper: Culpeper's Complete Herbal. A book of remedies for ancient ills . Ware, Wordsworth 1995, Letter to the Reader, v
3. ↑ Nicholas Culpeper, Culpeper's Complete Herbal, A book of remedies for ancient ills. Ware, Wordsworth 1995, Letter to the Reader, vi
4. ↑ Nicholas Culpeper, Culpeper's Complete Herbal, A book of remedies for ancient ills. Ware, Wordsworth 1995, Letter to the Reader, vii-viii
5. ↑ Nicholas Culpeper, Culpeper's Complete Herbal, A book of remedies for ancient ills. Ware, Wordsworth 1995, letter to the reader, vf.