Nicholas Culpeper
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Nicholas Culpeper (1616 – 1654 in London) was an English botanist, physician, and astrologer. He was the son of Nicholas Culpeper, a clergyman. He studied in Cambridge, and afterwards became apprenticed to an apothecary.
He ran a pharmacy in the Halfway House in Spitalfields, London. He published A Complete Herbal and English Physician Enlarged and The English Physician and Family Dispensary.
He was a radical republican and opposed to the "closed shop" of medicine. He believed that the use of Latin by doctors, lawyers and priests was a conspiracy to keep power and freedom away from the general public.
He died of tuberculosis at the young age of 38.
Quotations
- "Culpeper, the man that first ranged the woods and climbed the mountains in search of medical and salutary herbs, undoubtedly merited the gratitude of posterity". -- (Dr. Johnson).
- Quotation from Nicholas Culpeper himself: "The liberty of our Commonwealth is most impaired by three sorts of men, priests, physicians, lawyers."
References
- 1995. Culpeper's complete herbal. A book of natural remedies for ancient ills (Ware, Wordsworth edition).
- 2004. The Herbalist: Nicholas Culpeper and the Fight for Medical Freedom. Benjamin Woolley. HarperCollins.
External links
- Culpeper's The English Physitian - (1652) (http://www.med.yale.edu/library/historical/culpeper/culpeper.htm)
- The Complete Herbal (1653) (http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/66/113/frameset.html)
- This Sceptered Isle (BBC) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/sceptred_isle/page/74.shtml?question=74)