What was Frivolous, I left out as being unwilling to Blot Paper and Trouble your Brains with Impertinencies.

 

To the Astrological Physicians
of England,

NICHOLAS CULPEPER wishes Peace and Prosperity in this World,
and Eternal Beatitude in that which is to come.

Dear Souls,

To you all, and to you especially that heard these lectures, do I dedicate them, and present them to you, not to look upon only (for then I had as good have sent you a picture, and as much it would have pleased your eye). 

Man was made not only for speculation, but also for practice. Speculation brings only pleasure to a man's self; it's practice which benefits others. And I hope I need not tell you that man was not born for himself alone.

These rules will serve (if heedfully observed by the eye of reason) to balance your judgement in sailing through the prognostical part of physick, that so you may steer your course by the card of truth, and not float unsettledly upon the ways of error, ignorance or opinion. To you (rather than to any that I know) belongs the practice of physick, and so that practice may be perfect, judgement ought to be sound, and to make judgement sound is required an exquisite knowledge. Judgement is perfected by knowledge, knowledge by experience, whence it appears that the more communicative knowledge is, so much the more excellent it is. 

Of all the men in the world, I hate a drone most that sucks the sweetness of other men's labours, but doth no good himself, and will as soon teach physick or astrology to an oak as to a creature the centre of whose actions is terminated in himself. Surely, surely, if God had not made the nature of man communicative, he would not have made one man to stand in continual need of another. But we see the contrary, and the sons of wisdom know how to pick out the meaning of God from it.

I have given you here all my prognostigations from the decumbiture of the sick party, and although I ingenuously confess the greatest part of them will hold true in a horary question erected upon the sight of the urine, of which I have now added a compendious treatise. Yet this is my judgement at present: that next the nativity, the decumbiture is the safest and surest ground for you to build your judgement upon, and you shall always find it by experience. 

Excellent and true was that motto of Hermes Trismegistus, 

Quod est superius
est sicut inferis

and this will appear to the eye of everyone that deserves the name of a reasonable man, if he do but consider that his body is made of the same materials that the whole universe is made of, though not in the same forms; namely, of a composition of contrary elements. There is scarce a man breathing that knows his right hand from his left, but knows that if you set bottles of hot water to a man's feet, it will make his head sweat; and the reason is the mutual harmony of one part of the body with another. Why then as well should not the actions of one part of the creation produce as well effects in another, that being also one entire body composed of the same elements and in as great harmony? What's the reason that a man will do more for his brother, than he will for a stranger? Is it not because he is formed by the blood of the same mother, and begotten by the seed of the same father? Why then should not the celestial bodies act upon the terrestrial, they being made of the same matter, and by the finger of the same God? 

He that will not believe reason, let him believe experience; he that will believe neither, is little better than an infidel. 

I confess this way of judicature has been desired by many, promised by some, but hitherto performed by none; which was the motive cause I then took the task in hand myself, which I have now enlarged, in performing whereof, in many places I corrected the failings of my author. What was frivolous, I left out as being unwilling to blot paper and trouble your brains with impertinencies. Where he was too large, I abbreviated him, and where he was deficient I supplied him both with precept and example. 

If there be any failings, consider:

1. Nemo sine crimine vivit.
That man nev'r breathed yet, nor never shall,
That did all well, and had no fault at all.

2. My failings (if any be) were not intentional, but accidental. 

Together with this astrological judgement, I have also given you the judgement of Hippocrates and others. The rules whereof are drawn from the person of the sick, which although they have been often printed before, yet I have compared them with the original copy, and brought them into a plainer method, so that you may have your desire at one single ingress. If you make use of both these ways together in judging of the disease, without a miracle you can hardly fail.

If any find fault with the shortness of my rules, let them learn to walk worthy of those they have first; their own experience will bring them more. He's but an apish physician that builds all his practice upon other men's foundations; man was born to look after knowledge, and in this particular you are set in the way how to find it, by one that desires to be a friend to all honest and ingenious arts.

Thus have you what I have done, and you know for whose sakes I did it. What now remains, but that you labour with might and main for your own good, and the increase of your own knowledge to make experience of them?

For as the diligent hand maketh rich,
so the diligent mind encreaseth knowledge.

And for my own particular, never fear, but during the time I am amongst the living, I shall never cease to do you good in what I may or can.

Nich. Culpeper.

Spitalfields,
next door to the Red Lion.