Page 13 - Pharmacy History 29 July 2006

As well as the more conventional information one
might expect to find in a herbal, Culpeper offers many a fascinating side-light into the society of his time.
Describing the uses of ‘the common alder tree’, he remarks:
The leaves, put under the bare feet galled with travelling, are a great refreshing to them.
[In other words, in 17th-century England, those who could not afford to travel on horseback were obliged to walk, however long the journey.]
Further, concerning the same tree, he declares:
The said leaves, gathered while the morning dew
is on them, and brought into a chamber troubled with fleas, will gather them thereunto, which being suddenly cast out, will rid the chamber of those troublesome bedfellows’.
It is one thing, however, to gather herbs but quite another to turn them into efficacious remedies. After offering his list of plants, Culpeper then describes how they may be made into syrups, ointments, poultices etc, how applied and how stored. Many of these techniques are culinary which is not to be wondered at. The method
of manufacturing an ointment is very little different from that of making a savoury butter.
The book would appear to have been an instant success because it was, almost as instantly, pirated, two editions appearing, also dated 1652, the one bearing the imprint ‘printed for William Bentley’ and the other (rather piously) ‘Printed for the Good
of the Commonwealth’. Culpeper’s and
Cole’s response was swift. In the following year, 1653, they produced The English physitian enlarged, which included over 30 additional herbs not included in the 1652 edition, together with a slightly altered format and layout. It is on this edition that all subsequent versions have been based.
The development of book illustration in the late 18th Century and into the 19th brought about a radical change in the appearance of what had come to be called Culpeper’s Herbal. Although Culpeper’s own descriptions of each herb are painstakingly detailed and accurate, the possibility of including illustrations, sometimes coloured, to such a volume was an enormous advantage when it came to recognition.
The 19th Century also saw considerable alterations
to the text, some editors adding herbs discovered
since Culpeper’s lifetime, importing text from
other publications and revising some of Culpeper’s recommendations. In particular, his commitment to astrological medicine came into question at this time, a commitment which is undoubtedly one of the reasons he has been regarded as a charlatan. The whole practice of herbal or ‘botanic’ medicine, with or without astrological considerations, seems to have fallen from grace and was widely criticised.
The recent rise of interest in ‘alternative’ or ‘complementary’ medicine has included medical herbalism and there is now available a plethora of herbals, some authoritative, others more frivolous. Culpeper’s book holds its own in this market and one of the most interesting editions to appear during the last years of the 20th Century examines Culpeper’s colour herbal in the light of modern herbal medicine.
It is a fitting valediction, but whether he realised that his book would live over 350 years after his death we shall never know.
Editor’s Note:
This article is taken from an essay by Miriam Miller, published in the Newsletter of the Friends of the Wellcome Library and Centre for the History of Medicine, issue 33, autumn /winter, 2004. A list of original references is available on request.
volume 3 ■ no 29 ■ JULY 2006
Pharmacy History Australia ■ 13
Published by Wordsworth Publications (UK) 1995.