Nicholas Culpeper, English physician and astrologer
Nicholas Culpeper (1616-54) is a legendary figure in the field of herbal medicine. A contemporary of William Harvey he is popularly regarded as the figurehead of alternative medicine, yet most historians of medicine simply refer to him as an uncritical quack and star-gazer. What is the truth about his life? Nobody has yet told his story and the story is fascinating. A member of an old noble family he was born fatherless in Surrey, squandered a fortune in Cambridge, and tried to elope with a rich heiress who was killed by lightning. He trained as an apothecary in London, and by producing an unauthorized critical translation of the London Dispensatory he became the enemy of the physicians. In the Civil War he joined the Parliamentarian forces and was wounded. He fought a duel and was accused of witchcraft. In 1652 he wrote his famous herbal, The English Physician and before that the first English textbook on midwifery and childcare, The English Midwife. In this first modern biography Culpeper emerges as one of the most significant physicians of the English speaking countries in the 17th century
紙本圖書, English, 1992
St. Martin's Press, New York, N.Y., 1992