Abstract

Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654) achieved notoriety for his translation into English of the pharmacopoeia of the College of Physicians of London during a suspension of censorship after the Civil War, which included many scurrilous comments about the College. In this second article of a comparative textual study, I analyse Culpeper’s main lines of critique regarding the book’s compound remedies ‐ their cost, the practicality of instructions for making them up and the safety of certain opiated medicines and drastic purgative formulas ‐ and compare this text with a later expurgated version of 1661 aimed at physicians by Culpeper’s publisher Peter Cole. This version had been revised by three physicians (the ‘medical editors’) who deleted Culpeper’s most hostile entries, modified others but let some criticisms stand. The aim is to explore in depth for the first time what Culpeper originally wrote during the Interregnum and how these observations were received in Restoration England in this evaluation of mid‐seventeenth‐century recipes. Culpeper criticised the costly ingredients of some medicines required by the College, questioned the soundness of their instructions for making up others and warned his readers about dangerous preparations; the medical editors brought their experience to bear in comments on the range of compound medicines and countered Culpeper’s fear-mongering over their safety.