1652

Publication of Nicholas Culpeper’s The English Physician, and a year later as, The Complete Herbal. Subsequently known as Culpeper’s Herbal, it was “a book on Renaissance medicine so influential that it has remained in print for over 360 years” (Skuse, 148). Published in English, it incurred the ire of the College of Physicians, since “it promised its readers that it would show them how to keep themselves healthy using medicines that cost no more than a few pence to make” (156). It thereby empowered patients to devise remedies made from simple herbal syrups and waters, with hardly any need for medical intervention at all. “It was in many ways a commercialized version of the recipe books used by domestic herbalists, imparting knowledge that had been lost by the dislocation of city-dwellers from their families.” Culpeper’s Herbal became “a publishing phenomenon, going through 15 editions before 1700 and over a hundred to the present, making it “one of the most popular medical texts of all time” (156-157).