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

Plate 10 Herbs Illustrated : Filipenula, Fleawort, Familory, Short leav'd Toad Flax, Sow Fennell, Round Leav'd Fluellin, Eringo, Comon Figwort, CommonFurze, Foxglove, Flower de luce, Flaxweed

Antique hand colored copper etching with original hand coloring. Printed on handmade flax & hemp "Laid Paper".

Published by T Kelly, August 1st, 1815

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

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)

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 illnesses.