Nicholas Culpeper (1616 - 1654)

Nicholas Culpeper (18 October 1616 - 10 January 1654) was an English botanist, herbalist, physician, and astrologer. His books include The English Physician (1652), later known as the Complete Herbal (1653 ff.), which contains a store of pharmaceutical and herbal knowledge, and Astrological Judgement of Diseases from the Decumbiture of the Sick (1655), one of the most detailed documents on medical astrology in Early Modern Europe. He spent much of his life in outdoor cataloguing of hundreds of medicinal herbs. He criticized the methods of some 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."