A Field Guide to Common Phyſic (WIP)
16mm b/w film (b/w)

In 1652, herbalist, physician and astrologer Nicholas Culpeper published his renowned and widely read book The English Physician, which catalogued hundreds of herbs and plants, their properties and thier medicinal benefits. Culpeper’s aim was to make medical treatments more accessible to the common person and less reliant on professional medical practitioners and their expensive, proprietary chemical treatments. Though his work was based on the questionable system of astrological botany, which paired plants and diseases with planetary influences and tied in the ancient Galenic philosophy of humors, he ultimately succeeded in what he set out to do by empowering people with knowledge of their own bodies and mapping out a relationship to the world around them. A Field Guide to Common Phyſic looks at a sampling of advice found in this book and celebrates it in all of its eccentric splendor.