The English physitian enlarged: with three hundred, sixty, and nine medicines made of English herbs that were not in any impression until this: The epistle wil inform you how to know this impression from any other. 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. Herein is also shewed these seven things, viz. 1 The way of making plaisters, oyntments, oyls, pultisses, syrups, decoctions, julips, or waters, of al sorts of physical herbs, that you may have them ready for your use at al times of the yeer. 2 What planet governeth every herb or tree (used in physick) that groweth in England. 3 The time of gathering al herbs, both vulgarly, and astologically[sic]. 4 The way of drying and keeping the herbs al the yeer. 5 The way of keeping their juyces ready for use at al times. 6 The way of making and keeping al kind of useful compounds made of herbs. 7 The way of mixing medicines according to cause and mixture of the disease, and part of the body afflicted. By Nich. Culpeper, Gent. student in physick and astrologie: living in Spittle Fields.

London: printed by Peter Cole in Leaden-Hall, and are to be sold at his shop at the sign of the Printing-press in Cornhil, neer the Royal Exchange, 1653.

Second authorised edition, enlarged (first 1652; there were also two piracies, one in two issues, in the same year). In ‘To the reader’ Culpeper states that it is published on 5 September; the Thomason copy is annotated 29 August. This copy is of the same setting as the Thomason copy; Sanderson also describes another setting, E. 3. (a), with the printer’s device on the verso of the title and different pagination (copies at Wellcome and BL 988.a.7).

The first edition was a folio, published in 1652 and almost immediately pirated in duodecimo format, pocketable and more useful as a field guide. In producing his own small format edition, ‘with very many Additions to every Sheet in the Book’, Culpeper was obliged to denounce the piracy which he says is ‘very falsly printed; there being usually twenty or thirty gross mistakes in every sheet, many of them such as are exceeding dangerous to such as shal venture to use them’. He gives directions for distinguishing the edition in hand from the piracy of the first edition, the third of which is that ‘The true one is in Octavo, of a bigger Letter than the counterfet one, which is in Twelves, of the Letter smal Bibles use to be printed on.’ (The piracy appeared in two issues, in one with the imprint of William Bentley and in the other ‘printed for the commonwealth of England, another edition with the latter imprint, even worse printed, Henrey calls a counterfeit of the piracy).

This copy, now in very poor condition, was evidently consulted regularly by an early, possibly the first, owner. There are marks and pointing fists in the text, and annotations to the index, both additional page numbers and a few additional headings, including ‘Yard standing’ – the reference is to Culpeper’s use of Hemlock to treat ‘Priapismus, or continual standing of the Yard’ (underlined in the text on p. 123).