English Physician and Astrologer
Was Nicholas Culpeper (1616-54) the father of English herbal medicine or a quacksalver and charlatan astrologer? This first modern biography shows a more complex picture. For example during the Civil War the Puritan Culpeper was wounded while fighting on the Parliamentarian side, as a physician of the poor, he had a burning desire to explain the secrets of medicine to ordinary people. He was not only the author of the famous herbal The English Physician but he also wrote the first book on midwifery and childcare and translated The London Pharmacopoeia.
Thulesius has given us a welcome beginning of a study of a fascinating and neglected figure who made serious contributions to mid-seventeenth-century medicine while always living on the fringes of the established and licensed medical community.’ – Martha Baldwin, Journal of the History or Medicin
