A PHYSICAL DIRECTORY by CULPEPER, Nicholas - 1649

1649. CULPEPER, Nicholas. A PHYSICAL DIRECTORY or a Translation of the London Dispensatory Made by the Colledge of Physicians in London. Being that Book by which all Apothicaries are strictly commanded to make all their Physick with many hundred additions ... Also there is added the use of all the simples ... London: Peter Cole, 1649. First edition, a translation from the Latin of the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis (1618) of the College of Physicians. Small quarto. [18], 345 [i.e. 311, due to pagination errors & two missing leaves], [28] pp. Lacks frontispiece portrait and 2 leaves of text (K2&3, or pp. 59-62) Contemporary calf binding, rubbed and a little worn at extremities, with boards slightly bowed. Later endpapers, only the rear free endpaper has been removed, with a nineteenth-century bookplate at front pastedown. Ex library, a perforated stamp to title leaf and no other marks. Some leaves partially sprung but on the whole sound. Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654) was a Parliamentarian, wounded in the Civil War. He studied at Cambridge and apprenticed with two different apothecaries. In 1640 he began practice as a physician-astrologer, a practice not unusual for doctors of his day. He often treated the poor without charging for his service, and felt that everyone should have access to information about materia medica. The College of Physicians, feeling it held a monopoly on the official dispensatory, was angered when he published this unauthorized English-language translation of the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis and attacked his character. In spite of his astrological leanings, he was considered a competent physician and was a prolific writer of medical manuals. A rare title, it is offered as is. (Wellcome II, 414; Wing C7540; D.N.B.; Heirs to Hippocrates, p. 186).