CULPEPER, Nicholas
£1,450 · Offered by Sokol Books
A good copy of the 1677 reissue of the fifth edition, published the previous year, by the idiosyncratic physician and astrologer Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654). A proponent of astrological medicine and herbalism, he was seen by the burgeoning medical establishment as a vituperative quack (Poynter) and enemy of progress; to others he was a Robin Hood-type figure whose republican beliefs spurred on his quest to make medicine accessible to ordinary people. In the preface, he makes clear that his wife, Alice Culpeper, was to publish this book of his Choysest Secrets posthumously for the benefit of the public. This edition includes Book IX for the first time, with further remedies and treatises not published during Culpeper s lifetime. Like the other books in this collection, he not only draws from a wide variety of sources such as Galen, Aristotle, Mizauld, Albertus Magnus, and Scribonius, but he also goes to great lengths to emphasise his knowledge gained from constant practice. Book I covers headaches and various distempers, outlining causes such as cold, heat, plenitude of blood and windiness. Book II concerns the treatment of fevers; Culpeper draws on Hippocrates theory of the body being divided into three parts the humours, the flesh which contains the humours, and the spirit which animates both and extrapolates that fevers can occur in all three as a result of unnatural heat. Book III is a collection of 300 remedies against diverse diseases. Book IV is a treatise on pestilen
- Binding: Hardcover
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