The English Physician Enlarged
London, Printed for the Booksellers, 1794. Culpeper, Nicholas. The English Physician Enlarged. Printed for the Booksellers: London, 1794. 12mo (180x105mm) full calf bds, gilt ruled spine, red spine label, [12],345,[3]pp. Joints splitting, hinges firm; cnrs bruised; t.e. dusty/soiled; owner name
Second-hand hardcover
CULPEPER, Nicholas (1616 - 1654)
The English Physician Enlarged with three hundred and sixty-nine medicines, made of English herbs, that were not in any impression until this. Being an astrologo-physical discourse of the vulgar herbs of this nation, containing a complete method of physic whereby a man may preserve his body in health, or cure himself, being sick, for three pence charge, with such things only as grow in England, they being most fit for English bodies.
London: Printed for the Booksellers, 1794. First published in 1652; enlarged in 1653.
Duodecimo (180 × 105 mm). Contemporary plain full calf, gilt-decorated smooth spine, red morocco label. [12], 345, [3] pp : A–GG⁶. Joints and spine cracked but firm; hinges firm. End-papers fine. Head and tail of spine slightly chipped; corners lightly bruised and worn; light shelf wear to edges. Top edge lightly soiled. Owners’ names in ink and pencil to front free end-paper. Internally crisp and clean, with faint sporadic foxing, mostly marginal, and a small pinhole to X3.
¶ Nicholas Culpeper was an English herbalist, apothecary and physician who sought to make medical knowledge available beyond the professional classes. His English translation of the College of Physicians’ Pharmacopoeia Londinensis, published in 1649 as A Physical Directory, brought an authoritative medical text within reach of readers unable to consult Latin editions. His accompanying criticism of the medical establishment made him a controversial figure, particularly among those who regarded medical knowledge as the preserve of trained practitioners. First published in 1652 and enlarged the following year, The English Physician describes the medicinal properties and uses of plants found in England. Culpeper drew substantially on earlier botanical writers, notably John Parkinson’s Theatrum Botanicum (1640) and Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (1629), recasting much of this material for readers seeking practical remedies rather than learned botanical discourse.¹
The book combines herbal medicine with the astrological system then current in European medical thought. Plants were associated with particular planetary influences, which informed their supposed medicinal properties and application. Culpeper presented these ideas in English, arranged his material for practical consultation, and emphasised remedies made from plants growing locally. The title advertises the prospect of treating illness for as little as threepence. This combination of vernacular instruction, domestic remedies and low cost helps explain the work’s continued appeal across successive generations of readers.
A clean copy, internally crisp, in its contemporary calf binding.
§ OCLC records eleven holdings this edition in North America, one in Australia, Latrobe. Earlier editions widely held.
§ ESTC N006516;
¹ Tobyn, Graeme, ‘Culpeper’s herbal The English Physician and its debt to apothecary John Parkinson’, Medical History, 68, no. 3 (2024), pp. 237–253
Item #11594
Price: $600.00 AUD