The Herbalist: Nicholas Culpeper and the Fight for Medical Freedom

It dulls the sprite, it dims the fight,

It robs a woman of her right.

(#litres_trial_promo)

The sternest critic was King James himself. In 1604, he published his Counterblaste to Tobacco, in which he condemned the ‘manifold abuses of this vile custom of tobacco taking’. ‘With the report of a great discovery for a Conquest,’ he wrote, recalling Sir Walter Raleigh’s voyages to colonize Virginia, ‘some two or three Savage men were brought in together with this Savage custom. But the pity is, the poor wild barbarous men died, but that vile barbarous custom is yet alive, yea in fresh vigour.’

The King was particularly affronted by the medicinal powers claimed for the plant. It had been advertised as a cure for the pox, for example, but for James ‘it serves for that use but among the pocky Indian slaves’. He examined in detail its toxic effects, displaying an impressive grasp of prevailing medical theories. Following the intellectual fashion of the time, he also drew an important metaphorical conclusion about his own role in dealing with such issues: he was ‘the proper Physician of his Politic-body’ whose job was ‘to purge it of all those diseases by Medicines meet for the same’.

But even the efforts of an absolute monarch could not stop the spread of this pernicious habit. ‘Oh, the omnipotent power of tobacco!’ he fumed, consigning it to the same class of intractabilities as religious extremism: ‘If it could by the smoke thereof chase out devils … it would serve for a precious relic, both for the superstitious priests and the insolent Puritans, to call out devils withal.’

(#litres_trial_promo)

His ravings had no effect on consumption. Imports of tobacco boomed: 2,300 pounds in 1615, 20,000 in 1619, 40,000 in 1620, 55,000 in 1621, two million pounds a year by 1640.

(#litres_trial_promo) The more popular it became, the more James found that even he could not do without it. ‘It is not unknown what dislike We have ever had of the use of Tobacco, as tending to a general and new corruption, both of men’s bodies and manners,’ the King announced in a proclamation of 1619; nevertheless, he considered ‘it is … more tolerable, that the same should be imported amongst many other vanities and superfluities’ because, without it, ‘it doth manifestly tend to the diminution of our Customs’.

(#litres_trial_promo) In other words, the health risks of smoking were less important than his need for money.

James’s fiscal needs were certainly pressing. Since the reign of Elizabeth, finance had been a source of growing tension between the monarchy, Parliament, and members of the upper and ‘middling’ classes of society rich enough to pay taxes. Under England’s often anomalous constitutional arrangements, the King, though an absolute monarch, had to summon a Parliament – representing the nobility and the bishops in the House of Lords, mostly the landowning, professional, and merchant classes in the Commons – if he wanted to raise taxes. James had several sources of private revenue, such as rents and fines, but their value had eroded during a period of escalating inflation.

(#litres_trial_promo) Thus he was forced on several occasions to summon Parliament and haggle over his income, a process that tended to force some of the extravagances and corruptions of his court humiliatingly into the light. His response was to look for more private ways of raising money that did not require parliamentary consent. He borrowed heavily from the City of London, a ready source of money but provided, as events later showed, with strings. He started selling titles. He invented the lower rank of ‘baronet’, aimed at members of the gentry such as Sir Edward Culpeper, which offered the prestige of nobility without the prerogatives. He exploited feudal privileges such as ‘wardships’, a royal right to the income from estates inherited by under-age heirs. However, his most lucrative source of revenue was customs duties. These were notionally under the control of Parliament but, following a convention established in the reign of Edward IV, were granted to James for the duration of his reign. Taking advantage of the concession, he supplemented the income they generated with special duties or ‘impositions’ levied on particular goods. A test case brought in 1606 by a merchant who refused to pay the imposition on a hundredweight of currants affirmed that James was entitled to the money, on the grounds that the royal prerogative was ‘absolute’. The custom duty due on tobacco was 2d. per pound weight in 1604. James initially increased it more than fortyfold by adding an impost of 6s. 10d. a pound, a rate so punitive it proved unenforceable and had to be reduced. Exploiting another controversial privilege, he then granted a patent for control of the entire tobacco trade to a court favourite, who in return for the right to ‘farm’ the duties was expected to pay up to £15,000 a year into the royal exchequer. Later still, he allowed for the practice of ‘garbling’, imposing an obligation on merchants to have their goods checked and sealed by an official. It was claimed such a measure was needed to prevent the sale of bad or adulterated tobacco, but in practice it was used to increase revenue, as the officials began to charge a further 4d. per pound for passing each bale of tobacco. Such prescriptions set the tone not only of James’s fiscal policy, but also that of his heir, Charles I – a purgative applied by these physicians of the ‘Politic-body’ that would result in the most dreadful convulsions.

As well as being embroiled in such political controversies, tobacco was associated with intellectual ones as well. Critics disapprovingly noted that the herb carried the endorsement of philosophers such as Giambattista della Porta. Della Porta’s Natural Magick (first published in Latin in 1558 as Magiae naturalis) was one of a series of notorious sixteenth-century works that contained combustible mixes of herbalism, medicine, religion, magic, alchemy, and astrology. Such works had inspired a flowering of interest in magic in England, and particularly at Cambridge University, encouraged by Queen Elizabeth’s magus Dr John Dee (who had noted the properties of tobacco in his copy of Monardes’ herbal) and reflected in works such as Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In later years, tobacco also became associated with religious fanaticism. A sect called the Ranters thought that, since predestination meant that your fate in the next life was fixed, you may as well make the most of this one, and so smoking (along with drinking, feasting, and whoring) became elevated to a sacrament. Even the more sober Baptists were partial to a smoke during their services.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Thus, a pipe of tobacco in the early seventeenth century took the smoker on a heady botanical, political, and philosophical, as well as recreational, trip. This made it all the more appealing to a young Cambridge undergraduate with a curious mind and a full pocket. It was also the reason why the university authorities tried to ban smoking. They failed, or even had the reverse effect, and Nicholas was one among many who enjoyed flouting the prohibition.

Anticipating future generations of students, Nicholas may even have grown his own. He was certainly well acquainted in later life with ‘yellow henbane’, a variety of tobacco that he thought originated in Brazil and was now widespread in England. He knew what it looked like, and where it grew. He described the saffron juice derived from the leaves as an effective expectorant for ‘tough phlegm’. He also later noted in one of his medical books that the bruised leaves ‘applied to the place aggrieved by the king’s evil’ would alleviate discomfort. ‘Indeed,’ he added, ‘a man might fill a whole volume with the virtues of it.’

(#litres_trial_promo) Given the context, this must surely have been a mischievous reference to royal disapproval of the domestic weed.

(#litres_trial_promo) In 1619, James, under pressure from the settlers in Virginia and enticed by the prospect of greater revenues, issued a proclamation banning the cultivation of tobacco in England (which, being domestically grown, was free of excise duties and impositions). His grounds were that the ‘Inland plantation’ had allowed tobacco to ‘become promiscuous, and begun to be taken in every mean Village even amongst the basest people’, and because ‘divers persons of skill and experience’ had told him that the English variety was ‘more crude, poisonous and dangerous’ than the Virginian. The same disapproving policy continued into the reign of Charles I, who took further measures to monopolize its importation and to license its sale, on the grounds that it was ‘taken for wantonness and excess’.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Nicholas evidently saw smoking as a badge of the anti-authoritarianism that was to define his career, and it seems the two were combined into an intoxicating mix in his Cambridge days. However, it was another act of rebellion that was to have the most decisive influence on his forthcoming career.

The story is related in the most melodramatic style in a short, anonymous memoir concerning Nicholas that appeared in the introduction to a posthumous edition of one of his works:

One of the first Diversions that he had amongst some other smaller transactions and changes, none of his Life proving more unfortunate, was that he had engaged himself in the Love of a Beautiful Lady; I shall not name her for some reasons; her Father was reported to be one of the noblest and wealthiest in Sussex.

(#litres_trial_promo)

The identity of the lady remains a mystery. She had a personal estate worth £2,000 and a private income of £500 a year, according to the memoir, figures consistent with the wealth of, say, the daughter of a rich baronet, such as Sir John Shurley (1569–1631). Sir John was the owner of the manor of Isfield, and had an extended family that included a few possible candidates.

(#litres_trial_promo) If the lady belonged to the Shurley clan, it is easy to see why Nicholas kept the love affair secret. Sir John was William Attersoll’s patron. Attersoll dedicated two of his books to Sir John, and became a beneficiary of the baronet’s will in 1631 – the time that the adolescent intensities of Nicholas’s illicit love affair presumably came into flower in the woodlands around Isfield, and just before they were interrupted by his departure for Cambridge.

Nicholas was no match for a rich member of one of the most ancient and respected families in the county. He may have been a Culpeper, but he was from an inferior branch. The very suggestion of such a relationship would have caused his grandfather great embarrassment. ‘Parents have often too severe eyes over their Children’, as the memoir observed, and Nicholas knew only too well that Attersoll would bring down the wrath of an Old Testament God upon such a union. So the couple decided upon their ‘Martyrdoms’ – an elopement. ‘By letters and otherwise’ they plotted to meet in Lewes, where they were to be married in secret ‘and afterwards for a season … live privately till the incensed parents were pacified’.

On the appointed day, probably some time in 1633 or early 1634, the lady and one of her maids hid among their skirts ‘such Rich Jewels and other necessaries as might best appertain to a Journey’, while Nicholas pocketed the £200 left over from the money his mother had given him for his education at Cambridge. The Romeo set off by coach, the Juliet by foot, to rendezvous at the chapel in Lewes, where a priest waited to perform their secret nuptials.

As he approached his destination, news reached Nicholas of a providential intervention. As his bride-to-be and her companion were making their way across the Downs they were ‘suddenly surprised with a dreadful storm, with fearful claps of Thunder surrounded with flames of Fire and flashes of Lightning, with some of which Mr Culpeper’s fair Mistress was so stricken, that she immediately fell down dead’. A family friend passed by Nicholas’s coach as he received the news and took the distraught young man to the rectory at Isfield. The unexpected appearance of her son filled Nicholas’s mother with joy, until she became aware of the circumstances that had brought him there. The shock, according to the memoir, struck her down with an illness from which she would never recover.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Nicholas’s relationship with Attersoll was also terminally injured. It was yet more evidence of the young man’s irredeemable rebelliousness. ‘If we have warned them, and they would not be warned,’ Attersoll thundered in one of his biblical commentaries, ‘if we taught and trained them up in the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom, and they have broken the bands asunder, and cast the cords of duty and discipline from them, we may comfort our selves as the Minister doth, when he seeth his labour is spent in vain.’

(#litres_trial_promo) Attersoll disinherited his ward, and gave up on his religious education.

Nicholas left Cambridge in a state of ‘deep melancholy’. He could not stay in Sussex either; so, like many others who find themselves in need of a fresh start and a new life, he set off for that refuge of the dispossessed: London, where for a while he disappears from the historical record and our story, as others take centre stage.

* This and the following extracts introducing each chapter are taken from Culpeper’s The English Physitian.

BORAGE (#ulink_8e551fe8-1814-53f4-b01f-eb8f0fdbf0ce)

Borago officinalis (#ulink_8e551fe8-1814-53f4-b01f-eb8f0fdbf0ce)

These are very Cordial. The Leaves or Roots are to very good purpose used in putrid and Pestilential Fevers, to defend the Heart, and help to resist and expel the Poison, or the Venom of other Creatures.

The Flowers candied, or made into a Conserve are … good for those that are weak with long sickness, and to consumptions, or troubled with often swoonings or passions of the Heart: The Distilled Water is no less effectual to all the purposes aforesaid, and helpeth the redness and inflamationsof the Eyes being washed therewith: The dried Herb is never used, but the green; yet the Ashes therof boiled in Mead, or Honeyed Water is available against Inflammations and Ulcers in the Mouth or Throat, to wash and gargle it therewith. The Roots are effectual being made into a licking Electuary, for the Cough, and to condensate thin phlegm, and Rheumatic Distillations upon the Lungs.

The Seed is of the like effect; and the Seed and Leaves are good to encrease Milk in Women’s Breasts: The Leaves, Flowers and Seed, all, or any of them are good to expel Pensiveness and Melancholy. It helpeth to clarify the Blood, and mitigate heat in Fevers. The Juice made into a Syrup prevaileth much to all the purposes aforesaid, and is put with other cooling, opening, cleansing Herbs, to open obstructions, and help the yellow-Jaundice, and mixed with Fumitory, to cool, cleans, and temper the Blood, thereby it helpeth the Itch, Ringworms, and Tetters, or other spreading Scabs or Sores.

They are both Herbs of Jupiter, and under Leo, both great Cordials, great strengtheners of Nature.

Borage is covered with a soft down, and has round, ‘succulent’ stems about 1½ feet tall. The leaves are large, wrinkled, and deep green. It produces a froth of brilliant blue flowers. The fresh herb tastes of cucumber and is cooling, hence the association with staying the passions of the heart. Mixed with lemon and sugar in wine, it makes a refreshing summer drink which, according to the Victorian naturalist Richard Jefferies, used to be doled out to thirsty travellers at London railway stations.

(#litres_trial_promo) ‘A modern conceit,’ writes Richard Mabey, ‘is to freeze the blue flowers in ice-cubes.’

(#litres_trial_promo) The leaves mixed in salad are also said to fend off despondency.

In many herbals, Bugloss was considered to be the same plant, though Culpeper recognized them as different herbs with similar medicinal effects.

According to some authorities, the name is a corruption of corago, from the Latin cor, the heart, and ago, I bring.

In 1512, soon after the succession of Henry VIII, an act was passed by Parliament complaining about the ‘Science and Cunning of Physic and Surgery (to the perfect knowledge whereof be requisite both great Learning and ripe Experience)’ being ‘exercised by a great multitude of ignorant persons, of whom the greater part have no manner of insight in the same, nor in any other kind of learning’. Some of these ignorant persons were illiterate, others no better than ‘common Artificers, as Smiths, Weavers, and Women’ who ‘boldly and accustomably take upon them great Cures, and things of great Difficulty; in the which they partly use Sorcery and Witchcraft, partly apply such Medicines unto the disease as be very no[x]ious, and nothing meet therefore, to the high displeasure of God, great infamy to the Faculty, and the grievous Hurt, Damage, and Destruction of many of the King’s liege People, most especially of them that cannot discern the cunning from the uncunning’. The act therefore ruled that anyone wanting to practise medicine or ‘physic’ within seven miles of London must first submit themselves to examination by the Bishop of London or Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, ‘calling to him or them [bishop and dean] four doctors of physic … as they thought convenient’.

(#litres_trial_promo) The religious authorities were to police the system because it was still widely accepted that the Church was primarily responsible for personal welfare, body as well as soul.

However, in September 1518, Henry VIII himself intervened by issuing a Charter that took the power to regulate medicine in London out of the hands of the Church and gave it to a new body, the ‘College of Physicians’. This would issue licences to those considered learned and skilled enough to practise, and impose fines of up to £5 per month upon those who practised without a licence. The College was to be financed by these fines, as well as fees for conducting examinations and issuing licences.

In London at the time, nearly all forms of commercial activity were controlled by guilds. These organizations were responsible for the apprenticeship system that trained new entrants into each trade, trainees being ‘bound’ to a master for a period typically of seven or eight years during which they would learn their craft. Once they had reached a sufficient standard of skill, they were ‘freed’ to practise in their own right. As freemen, they acquired a high degree of political influence, at least by the standards of the time. They could vote in elections for the Common Council, the City’s parliament, and through their guilds controlled the City’s administration: the Court of Aldermen and the Lord Mayor.

The guilds were concerned with social as well as political status, and were preoccupied with matters of rank and dress. Each had its own uniform and liked to parade their colours on special occasions, which was why the guilds came to be known as livery companies. They fought ferociously over matters of precedence, jockeying for position in the official list of the twelve ‘chief companies, from whose membership the Lord Mayor was chosen annually. The most powerful was the Company of Mercers (cloth merchants), followed by the Grocers (originally known as the ‘Pepperers’), the Drapers, the Fishmongers, the Goldsmiths, the Skinners, and so on.

The College of Physicians did not fit comfortably into this delicately arranged system. It was small – its membership was capped at twenty to thirty members or ‘Fellows’ compared to a thousand or so in the larger livery companies – yet its influence was enormous as it served not only most members of the Privy Council but the royal household itself, a fifth of the Fellows being officially engaged in attending the monarch. It exercised a monopoly over practice, and set standards, yet had no responsibility for training. In 1525, in an attempt to regularize the position, the Common Council passed an act accepting the College’s monopoly of medical practice but banned Fellows from dispensing medicines. This was to protect the Grocers, among whose ranks were the apothecaries, specialists in medicinal supplies and the preparation of prescriptions.