Abstract

England's first pharmacopoeia hid from the untrained knowledge of the medicines physicians prescribed in its Latin text. In the absence of censorship during the interregnum, Nicholas Culpeper (1616–1654) translated it for all to read and appended a commentary pointing out worthless or dangerous remedies to his untrained readers and poor instructions to apothecaries for compounding others. Meanwhile College Fellows were preparing a new updated edition which paid little attention to Culpeper's criticisms and provoked harsher attacks on the College when he translated it in turn. The direction of criticism was reversed when Culpeper's publisher Peter Cole, in anticipation of a new reality in Restoration England, engaged medical editors to rectify and supplement the translation to make it acceptable to the College. This article compares these various texts, highlighting lines of criticism, examples of scurrilous abuse and how the editors defended the official Galenic and chymical remedies of the day.