Nicholas Culpeper was an English botanist, herbalist, physician, and astrologer. His books include The English Physitian, otherwise known as the Complete Herbal, which contains a store of pharmaceutical and herbal knowledge, and Astrological Judgement of Diseases from the Decumbiture of the Sick, one of the most detailed documents known on the practice of medical astrology in Early Modern Europe. He spent much of his life in outdoors cataloguing hundreds of medicinal herbs. He criticized what he saw as the unnatural methods of his contemporaries: "This not being pleasing, and less profitable to me, I consulted with my two brothers, Dr. Reason and Dr. Experience, and took a voyage to visit my mother Nature, by whose advice, together with the help of Dr. Diligence, I at last obtained my desire; and, being warned by Mr. Honesty, a stranger in our days, to publish it to the world, I have done it." Culpeper came of a long line of notabilities, including Thomas Culpeper, lover of Catherine Howard, who was sentenced to death by Catherine's husband, King Henry VIII.
Also known as
Physician, Astrologer
