Culpeper’s medicine. A practice of Western holistic medicine

This book is not to be confused with Culpeper’s Herbal, the well-known herbal written by the 17th-century English herbalist and astrologer Nicholas Culpeper, still in print after 300 years. The present volume, written by a practising herbalist and teacher of astrology, is an exploration of the system of medicine practised by Culpeper and its philosophy.

The book begins with a detailed and insightful look at Culpeper’s life. This well-researched chapter is peppered with fascinating anecdotes about the joys, tragedies, discoveries, successes and other events which shaped the herbalist’s life and his work. For example, the reader learns that in 1642 Culpeper was imprisoned and tried for witchcraft, a charge which carried the death sentence; he was found not guilty and acquitted.

Part two leads the reader through the philosophy of Culpeper’s medicine, defining and explaining the 7 “natural things” (which include the 4 elements, the 4 temperaments and the 4 humours) provided the basic principles of Western holistic medicine. Tobyn takes great care in introducing these concepts to the reader and illustrates his explanations with passages from Culpeper’s own works. The remainder of part two is devoted to a description of Culpeper’s view on the preservation of health and the prevention of disease. This centred around the “doctrine of the six non-naturals” - external factors, including air, diet, exercise, and perturbations of the mind, which were claimed to affect the body.

Part three brings astrology into the picture. This is a lengthy chapter which attempts to explain, amongst other things, Culpeper’s association of the planets with parts of the body and diseases, and how astrology can be used not only for diagnosis and prognosis, but also for choosing the most favourable moment for a given treatment.

The final chapter gives the reader a detailed explanation of herbal medicine and therapeutics. The reader learns about Culpeper’s rules for prescribing (herbal) medicines, the temperament of medicines, and the doctrine of signatures whereby the visual appearance of a plant was often believed to reveal its medicinal uses by its likeness to a part of the body. Readers are also treated to tables of herbs and their qualities and actions, and aspects of pharmacy in Culpeper’s medicine.

While virtually all of this book is mumbo jumbo in terms of today’s rational approach to phytotherapy, I found it to be an interesting historical account of Culpeper’s practice of herbal medicine and it is definitely more readable than Culpeper himself. A particularly delightful feature is the inclusion of 25 plate illustrations of herbs and herbalists reproduced from mediaeval herbals.