Enlarged, with 369 medicines made of English Herbs that were not in any impression until this. The Epistle will inform you how to know this impression from any other.’ This work, like its predecessor, had an enormous sale. An edition of 1661 was edited by Abdiah Cole. Five editions appeared before 1698, and it was reissued in 1802 and 1809. Other books which appeared in Culpeper's lifetime were: 1. ‘Semeiotica Uranica, or an Astronomicall Judgment of Diseases,’ based on Arabic and Greek medical writings, 1651. 2. ‘A Directory for Midwives,’ 1651. 3. ‘Galen's Art of Physic,’ 1652. 4. ‘Catastrophe Magnatum, or the Fall of Monarchy,’ 1652. 5. ‘Idea Universalis Medica Practica,’ Amsterdam, 1652, (in English) 1669. 6. ‘An Ephemeris for 1653,’ 1653. 7. ‘Anatomy,’ 1654. 8. ‘A New Method of Physic,’ 1654. Active medical practice and the composition of these works, all of which embodied much research, ruined Culpeper's health, and he died of consumption, originally engendered, it is said, by his old wound, on Monday, 10 Jan. 1653–4, aged 38. He married and was the father of seven children. He was cheated of his patrimony, according to his own account, in his youth, and was always in straitened circumstances, yet he was ready at any time to give gratuitous medical advice to the poor. His widow was married for the second time to John Heyden, author of the ‘Angelical Guide.’
Culpeper left many manuscripts in his wife's custody. ‘My husband,’ Mrs. Culpeper wrote in 1655, ‘left seventy-nine books of his own making or translating in my hands,’ and Peter Cole, the publisher, was invited to print them. He had already, it was alleged, published seventeen books by the astrologer, and had paid liberally for them. But a rival stationer named Nathaniel Brooks put forward several works with Culpeper's name on the title-page. The chief of these were: (1) ‘Culpeper's Last Legacy left and bequeathed to his Dearest Wife for the Publick Good,’ 1655, which included treatises on fevers, the pestilence, and the Galenists' system of medicines, together with a collection of original aphorisms; (2) Culpeper's ‘Astrologicall Judgment of Diseases,’ 1655, in the preface to which Brooks states that many of Culpeper's manuscripts came to him on his death; and (3) ‘Arts Masterpiece, or the Beautifying Part of Physick,’ 1660. The authenticity of these works seems in the main undoubted, in spite of Mrs. Culpeper's denials. In 1656 Peter Cole issued ‘Two Books of Physick, viz. Medicaments for the Poor, or Physick for the Common People, from the Latin of Prævortius, and Health for the Rich and Poor by Diet without Physick.’ In the preface Mrs. Culpeper denounced Brooks, and called ‘Culpeper's Last Legacy’ in part a forgery and in part ‘an undigested Gallimawfrey.’ In succeeding years Peter Cole employed Abdiah Cole [q. v.], probably a relative, to prepare for the press a large number of those medical tracts and translations which Culpeper was stated to have left him in manuscript. Among these are: ‘The Rational Physician Library,’ 1662; ‘Chemistry made Easy and Useful,’ translated from Sennertus, 1662; and ‘The Chirurgeon's Guide,’ 1677. In 1802 G. A. Gordon, M.D., published a collective edition of Culpeper's works in four volumes. This edition includes (1) The English Physician enlarged, or the Herbal, (2) the London Dispensatory, and (3) the Astrologicall Judgment.
A portrait of Culpeper was prefixed to the ‘Last Legacy’ as well as to the ‘Directory.’
[Gent. Mag. 1797, pt. i. pp. 390–1, 477–8; Gordon's edition of Culpeper's Works; Culpeper's Works; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; see also art. Abdiah Cole.]
CULPEPER, Sir THOMAS, the elder (1578–1662), writer on usury, was only son of Francis Culpeper, or Colepeper, who purchased the manors of Greenway Court and Elnothington, near Hollingbourn, Kent, of Sir Warham St. Leger, in Elizabeth's reign, and resided on the former. The father was the second son of William Culpeper, or Colepeper, of Losenham, and married Joan, daughter of John Pordage of Rodmersham, Kent; died in 1591 at the age of fifty-three, and was buried at Hollingbourn. Thomas, born in 1578, became a commoner of Hart Hall, Oxford, in 1591; left the university without a degree; entered himself as a student at one of the Inns of Court; purchased Leeds Castle, Kent, and lived either there or at Greenway Court for the rest of his life. James I knighted him 23 Sept. 1619 (Nichols, Progresses of James I, iii. 568). In 1620 he began writing his ‘Tract against the high rate of Usurie,’ and published it after having presented it to parliament in 1621. Culpeper argues that ten per cent., which was the legalised rate of interest at the time, was too high for commerce or morality, and argued for its reduction to six per cent. The subject came before parliament in 1623 and 1624. Ultimately the rate of interest was reduced to eight per cent. (21 Jac. I, c. 17). Bacon, whose essay on usury was first published in 1625, demanded a reduction to five per cent. Culpeper's tract was reprinted in 1641, and twice in 1668—first by Sir Josiah Child [q. v.]
