Text-fig. 111. Astrological Diagram relating to the gathering of “Cervaria fœmina” [Thurneisser, Historia sive Descriptio Plantarum, 1587].
After the manner of the ancients, Thurneisser describes plants, according to their qualities, as either male or female. He also adds a third class, typified by a child, to symbolise those whose qualities are feeble. It may perhaps be worth while to translate here a few sentences of the first chapter of the ‘Historia[42],’ to show how far such writers as Leonhardt Thurneisser had departed from the pursuit of the subject upon legitimate lines. When discussing the planting of roots and herbs and the gathering of seeds, he declares that “it is absolutely essential that these operations should be performed so as to correspond with the stations and positions of the planets and heavenly bodies, to whose control diseases are properly subject. And against disease we have to employ herbs, with due regard of course to the sex, whichever it be, of human beings; and so herbs intended to benefit the male sex should be procured when the Sun or Moon is in some male sign [of the Zodiac], e.g. Sagittarius or Aquarius, or if this is impossible, at least when they are in Leo. Similarly herbs intended to benefit women should be gathered under some female sign, Virgo, of course, or, if that is impossible, in Taurus or Cancer.”
In the seventeenth century, England became strongly infected with astrological botany. The most notorious exponent of the subject was Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654), who, about 1640, set up as an astrologer and physician in Spitalfields. His portrait is reproduced in Plate [XXI]. He created great indignation among the medical profession by publishing, under the name of ‘A Physicall Directory,’ an unauthorised English translation of the Pharmacopœia, which had been issued by the College of Physicians. That Culpeper was unpopular with orthodox medical practitioners is hardly surprising, when we consider the way in which he speaks of them in this book, as “a company of proud, insulting, domineering Doctors, whose wits were born above five hundred years before themselves.” He goes on to ask—“Is it handsom and wel-beseeming a Common-wealth to see a Doctor ride in State, in Plush with a footcloath, and not a grain of Wit but what was in print before he was born?”
Many editions of the ‘Physicall Directory’ were issued under different names. As ‘The English Physician enlarged,’ it enjoyed great popularity, and was reprinted as late as the nineteenth century. The edition of 1653 is described on the title-page as “Being an Astrologo-Physical Discourse of the Vulgar Herbs of this Nation: Containing a Compleat Method of Physick, whereby a man may preserve his Body in Health; or Cure himself, being Sick, for three pence Charge, with such things only as grow in England, they being most fit for English Bodies.”
Plate XXI
NICHOLAS CULPEPER (1616-1654).
[A Physicall Directory, 1649. Engraving by Cross.]