1. Nicholas Culpeper was an English botanist, herbalist, physician and astrologer.
16 Facts About Nicholas Culpeper
1. 2.
Nicholas Culpeper would go on, throughout his life, spending time in the countryside cataloguing plants.
3.
In 1640, Nicholas Culpeper married Alice Field, the 15-year-old heiress of a wealthy grain merchant, which allowed him to set up a pharmacy at the halfway house in Spitalfields, London, outside the authority of the City of London, at a time when medical facilities in London were at breaking point.
4.
Nicholas Culpeper was taken back to London after sustaining a serious chest injury from a bullet, from which he never fully recovered.
5.
Nicholas Culpeper was survived by his wife, Alice, who married the astrologer John Heydon in 1656.
6.
Nicholas Culpeper followed them up with a manual on childbirth and with his main work, The English Physitian, which was deliberately sold cheaply.
7.
Nicholas Culpeper saw medicine as a public asset, not a commercial secret, and the prices physicians charged as too high compared with the cheap, universal availability of nature's medicine.
8.
Nicholas Culpeper felt the use of Latin and the high fees charged by doctors, lawyers and priests worked to deprive the public of power and freedom.
9.
Nicholas Culpeper attempted to make medical treatments more accessible to lay persons by educating them about maintaining their health.
10.
The systematisation of the use of herbals by Nicholas Culpeper was a key development in the evolution of modern pharmaceuticals, most of which originally had herbal origins.
11.
Nicholas Culpeper was one of the best-known astrological botanists of his day, pairing the plants and diseases with planetary influences, countering illnesses with nostrums that were paired with an opposing planetary influence.
12.
Nicholas Culpeper's streamlining of the content involved eschewing illustrations, narrowing the focus to only English herbs, and omitting any non-medical uses of said plants, such as in animal husbandry or domestic chores.
13.
Nicholas Culpeper was one of the first to translate from Latin documents discussing medicinal plants found in the Americas and colonists introduced medicinal plants from the Europe to the New World because they were featured in herbals like Nicholas Culpeper's.
14.
Nicholas Culpeper described the medical use of the foxglove, the botanical precursor to digitalis, used to treat heart conditions.
15.
Nicholas Culpeper's influence is demonstrated by the existence of a chain of "Culpeper" herb and spice shops in Canada, North America and beyond, and by the continued popularity of his remedies among New Age and alternative holistic medicine practitioners.
16.
Nicholas Culpeper is featured as the title protagonist in Rudyard Kipling's story "Doctor of Medicine", part of his Puck of Pook's Hill anthology.