Botany Medical Plants Herbs Nicholas Culpeper, Complete Herbal, 1824 Antique Print

Plate 34 Herbs Illustrated : White Willow, Wading Pond Weed, Dwaf [Dwarf] Willow Grass, Sweet Flag, Great Hone Wart, Wall Flower, Black Willow, Wheat, Cad Weed, Woodbine, Cow Butcher Broom.

Antique copper etching on Flax/Hemp handmade "Laid" paper after Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654), with original hand coloring.

Published by T Kelly, August 1st, 1815

Size of Paper 20 x 26cm ( 8 x 10 1/3 inch) / Plate-mark 17 x 19.5cm (6 2/3 x 7 2/3 inch)

Condition:  Fair, with no tears or mold, discoloration along right side of paper, evidence of handling.

Nicholas Culpeper's Purpose

Culpeper, as an apothecary, believed medicine was a public asset rather than a commercial secret. He believed the doctors of 17th century Medical Science were far too expensive compared to the cheap and universal availability of nature's restorative health cabinet available in their own environment.

Nicholas Culpeper considered doctors, lawyers and priests were keeping power and freedom from the general public. His solution on the health front, was to publish a layman's bible of nature's medical benefits & simple preparation techniques for Men, Women and Children.

Considered a radical in his time, angering his fellow physicians by condemning their greed and unwillingness to stray from their use of harmful practices such as toxic remedies and bloodletting. At the other end of the scale, the Society of Apothecaries were similarly incensed by the fact that he suggested cheap herbal remedies as opposed to their expensive concoctions.

Culpeper's "Complete Herbal" was a collection of natural remedies sourced from plants growing in meadows, road verges and forests. Either steeping them in hot water, eating them, or mixing them into a topical cream, were the recipes he recorded to solve male, female ("women's causes") or child maladies.