This well-known writer, whose “Herbal” has been familiar to many
past generations as a family medicine book, deserves a place among
our Masters in Pharmacy for the freedom, and occasional acuteness
with which he criticised the first and second editions of the London
Pharmacopœia. One specimen of his sarcastic style must suffice. The
official formula for Mel Helleboratum was to infuse 3 lbs. of white
hellebore in 14 lbs. of water for three days; then boil it to half its
bulk; strain; add 3 lbs. of honey and boil to the consistence of honey.
This is Culpepper’s comment (in his “Physicians’ Library”):--
“What a _monstrum horrendum_, horrible, terrible recipe
have we got here:--A pound of white hellebore boiled in 14
lbs. of water to seven. I would ask the College whether the
hellebore will not lose its virtue in the twentieth part of
this infusion and decoction (for it must be infused, forsooth,
three days to a minute) if a man may make so bold as to tell
them the truth. A Taylor’s Goose being boiled that time would
make a decoction near as strong as the hellebore, but this
they will not believe. Well, then, be it so. Imagine the
hellebore still remaining in its vigour after being so long
tired out with a tedious boiling (for less boiling would boil
an ox), what should the medicine do? Purge melancholy, say
they. But from whom? From men or beasts? The devil would not
take it unless it were poured down his throat with a horn.
I will not say they intended to kill men, _cum privilegio_;
that’s too gross. I charitably judge them. Either the virtue
of the hellebore will fly away in such a martyrdom, or else it
will remain in the decoction. If it evaporate away, then is
the medicine good for nothing; if it remain in it is enough to
spoil the strongest man living. (1.) Because it is too strong.
(2.) Because it is not corrected in the least. And because
they have not corrected that, I take leave to correct them.”
[Illustration: CULPEPPER.
(From an old book of his.)
]
This passage is not selected as a favourable specimen of Culpepper’s
pharmaceutical skill, but as a sample of the manner in which he often
rates “the College.” His own opinions are open to quite as severe
criticism. A large part of his lore is astrological; and he is very
confident about the doctrine of signatures. But he knew herbs well, and
his general advice is sound.
Perhaps many of those who have studied his works have formed the idea
that he was a bent old man with a long grey beard, who busied himself
with the collection of simples. He was, in fact, a soldier, and died
at the early age of 38. His portraits and the descriptions of him
by his astrological friends represent him as a smart, brisk young
Londoner, fluent in speech and animated in gesture, gay in company, but
with frequent fits of melancholy, an extraordinarily good conceit of
himself, and plenty of reason for it.
[Illustration: CULPEPPER’S HOUSE.
(From an old book of his.)]
Culpepper lived in the stirring times of the Civil War, and fought
on one side or the other, it is not certain which. Most likely,
judging from the frequent pious expressions in his works, he was a
Parliamentarian. He was severely wounded in the chest in one of the
battles, but it is not known in which. It is probable that it was this
wound which caused the lung disease from which he died.
Such information as we have of Culpepper’s career is gathered from
his own works, and from some brutal attacks on him in certain public
prints. He describes himself on the title-pages of some of his big
books as “M.D.,” but there is no evidence that he ever graduated.
He lived, at least during his married life, at Red Lion Street,
Spitalfields, and there he carried on his medical practice. Probably
it was a large one, for he evidently understood the art of advertising
himself. He claims to have been the only doctor in London at the time
who gave advice gratis to the poor, and his frequent comments on the
cost of the pharmacopœia preparations suggest that the majority of his
patients were not of the fashionable class.
Nicholas Culpepper was apprenticed to an apothecary in Great St.
Helen’s, Bishopsgate, and at the same time a certain Marchmont
Nedham was a solicitor’s clerk in Jewry Street. Nedham became the
most notorious journalist in England, and founded and edited in turn
the _Mercurius Britannicus_, an anti-royalist paper, the _Mercurius
Pragmaticus_, violently anti-Commonwealth, and the _Mercurius
Politicus_, subsidised by Cromwell’s government, and supervised by
Mr. John Milton. This publication, amalgamated with the _Public
Intelligencer_, its principal rival, has descended to us as the _London
Gazette_. Probably Nedham and Culpepper were friends in their early
days, and they may have been comrades in arms when the war broke
out. But evidently they became fierce enemies later. In _Mercurius
Pragmaticus_ Nedham, pretending to review Culpepper’s translation of
the official Dispensatory, takes the opportunity of pouring on him a
tirade of scurrilous abuse. The translation, he says, “is filthily
done,” which was certainly not true. This is the only piece of
criticism in the article. The rest deals with the author personally.
Nedham informs his readers that Culpepper was the son of a Surrey
parson, “one of those who deceive men in matters belonging to their
most precious souls.” That meant that he was a Nonconformist. Nicholas
himself, according to Nedham, had been an Independent, a Brownist,
an Anabaptist, a Seeker, and a Manifestationist, but had ultimately
become an Atheist. During his apprenticeship “he ran away from his
master upon his lewd debauchery”; afterwards he became a compositor,
then a “figure-flinger,” and lived about Moorfields on cozenage. After
making vile insinuations about his wife, Nedham states that by two
years’ drunken labour Culpepper had “gallimawfred the Apothecaries’
Book into nonsense”; that he wore an old black coat lined with plush
which his stationer (publisher) had got for him in Long Lane to hide
his knavery, having been till then a most despicable ragged fellow;
“looks as if he had been stued in a tanpit; a frowzy headed coxcomb.”
He was aiming to “monopolise to himself all the knavery and cozenage
that ever an apothecary’s shop was capable of.”
Culpepper’s works answer this spiteful caricature, for at any rate
he must have been a man of considerable attainments, and of immense
industry. That his writings acquired no little popularity is best
proved by the fact that after his death it was good business to forge
others somewhat resembling them and pass them off as his.