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)
• The Complete Herbal (1653)
• This Sceptered Isle (BBC)