BBC The Rebel Physician
Benjamin Woolley presents the gripping story of Nicholas Culpeper, the 17th century radical pharmacist who took on the establishment in order to bring medicine to the masses. Culpeper lived during one of the most tumultuous periods in British history. When the country was ravaged by famine and civil war, he took part in the revolution that culminated in the execution of King Charles I. But it is Culpeper's achievements in health care that made him famous. By practicing (often illegally) as a herbalist and publishing the first English-language texts explaining how to treat common ailments, he helped to break the monopoly of a medical establishment that had abandoned the poor and needy. His book The English Physician became the most successful non-religious English book of all time, remaining in print continuously for more than 350 years.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00At the beginning of the 17th century,
00:03England was a powerful and prosperous land.
00:06But within 50 years, it would be overwhelmed
00:09by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
00:19Famine, disease and death ravaged the country
00:22throughout one of the most tumultuous and bloody periods of British history.
00:27As civil war raged between cavaliers and roundheads,
00:31one man was waging his own battle.
00:34Nicholas Culpepper took on the establishment
00:37in a bid to bring medicine to the masses.
00:45Culpepper was an outcast from respectable society,
00:48a man whose passion for democracy and appetite for rebellion
00:52brought him into constant conflict with the establishment.
00:55Working in the underground world of religious sects,
00:58secret printing presses and unlicensed apothecary shops,
01:01he waged a private war to bring medical knowledge
01:04and ultimately political power to the people.
01:07He was part of a brave new world
01:10in which old privileges were being challenged
01:13and faith and authority lost.
01:15A courageous radical, he took a step into the unknown
01:19and became part of a revolution that toppled a monarchy.
01:26CHOIR SINGS
01:34London, the teeming metropolis.
01:37Nearly 400 years ago,
01:39the city was one of the most densely populated in Europe.
01:42Death stalked the streets,
01:44fetid streams and open sewers seethed with disease.
01:48At a time when there was no concept of germs,
01:51infection was understood to be a corruption of the air,
01:54a miasma that exuded from the earth.
01:58London was a sick city.
02:00More people died there than were born
02:02and Londoners died from all kinds of diseases.
02:05Diseases of poor water, poor sewage and poor food.
02:08So people died from fevers, people died from dysentery
02:13and occasionally they died from epidemic diseases
02:16which would sweep through the city,
02:18killing between 10, 15 or even sometimes 20% of the population.
02:25As Thomas Hobbes famously said,
02:27life was nasty, brutish and short in the 17th century.
02:30Life expectancy probably wasn't much more than about 28 to 35
02:34and that was largely due to very high rates of infant mortality.
02:38Despite the prevalence of disease,
02:40just 30 doctors were responsible for the healthcare
02:43of nearly 400,000 Londoners.
02:45Only the rich could afford their high fees.
02:48The poor were forced to use an underground army
02:51of illegal practitioners.
02:53This was the brutal world of medicine in the 17th century.
02:57This was the world of Nicholas Culpepper.
03:08Culpepper's father was the vicar of Oakley,
03:11a small country parish in Sussex.
03:13He'd only been in the village a short time
03:15when his wife Mary conceived their first child in 1616,
03:19but during the pregnancy, the vicar had died.
03:22During the pregnancy, the vicar fell ill with typhoid.
03:25Mary would have been expected to bleed her husband
03:28and purge him with enemas.
03:30These treatments only weakened him further until he finally died.
03:36The Reverend Culpepper was buried in his own graveyard.
03:39Less than a fortnight later, Mary gave birth to their son.
03:43She gave him his father's name, Nicholas.
03:47Mary took her baby and returned to live with her father,
03:50Reverend William Attersole, in the nearby parish of Isfield.
03:54He was not pleased to see them.
03:57Reverend Attersole was an austere Puritan
04:00who despised his ignorant rural congregation.
04:03He preached that illness was good for the soul
04:06and that Christians should spend their lives meditating upon death.
04:11The young Culpepper hated his grandfather's brimstone views
04:15and sought refuge with the women of the village.
04:18They were less concerned with saving souls and conquering sin
04:22than the more practical arts of nurturing and healing.
04:30As a child, Culpepper roamed the Sussex countryside,
04:33gathering herbs for his mother's medicines.
04:36He learned that lady's mantle was good for sagging breasts,
04:40that stinking arich warded off period pains
04:43and that honeysuckle ointment soothed sunburn.
04:46It was in these fields and forests
04:48that he discovered the curative powers of nature.
04:51In years to come, he would use this knowledge
04:54to produce one of the most significant and best-selling books in English history.
05:00Tansy.
05:02Dame Venus was minded to pleasure women with child by this herb.
05:06Bruised and applied to the navel, it stays miscarriage.
05:10Let those women that desire children love this herb
05:13as the best companion their husband accepted.
05:16Fried with eggs, it helpeth to digest and carry down
05:19with those bad humours that trouble the stomach.
05:26In 1632, his grandfather sent the rebellious and opinionated young Culpepper
05:31away to Cambridge University.
05:34The intention was that the 16-year-old would receive a proper education
05:38in the liberal arts of arithmetic, music, logic and astronomy
05:42that would equip him to become a man of the church.
05:45But Culpepper had other plans.
05:47Virginia tobacco, imported from England's new colonies in America,
05:51was the latest rage among students in Cambridge.
05:54For Culpepper, the smoke-filled chambers and taverns
05:57were an exhilarating new world.
05:59The university authorities tried to ban smoking,
06:02but Culpepper defied them and probably resorted to growing his own.
06:07His smoking was an early expression of the anti-authoritarianism
06:11that was to define his life.
06:14The following year, his willfulness led him to abandon his education
06:18when he fell in love with a young woman.
06:20Mystery surrounds her identity,
06:22but she was supposedly the daughter of one of the richest men in Sussex.
06:26A minister's son like Culpepper would never be a fitting match,
06:30and so they decided to elope.
06:32But before Culpepper could meet his bride to be at the chapel,
06:35she was caught in a violent thunderstorm and hit by lightning.
06:42She died instantly.
06:45The distraught Culpepper returned to Sussex
06:48but received cold comfort from his Puritan grandfather,
06:52who brought down the wrath of the Old Testament on him.
06:56He then disowned his wretched grandson.
06:59Culpepper was on his own.
07:03BORAGE
07:10The flowers and seed are good to expel pensiveness and melancholy.
07:15The leaves or roots are to very good purpose used in putrid and pestilential fevers
07:20to defend the heart and help to resist and expel the venom of other creatures.
07:25The distilled water helpeth the redness and inflammations of the eyes
07:29being washed therewith.
07:32At the time of Culpepper's elopement,
07:34the medical profession was controlled by just 30 men,
07:37the distinguished members of the College of Physicians.
07:40Among them was a man who would become one of the founders of modern medicine
07:45and a symbol of everything that Culpepper would come to despise.
07:49Back in 1603, 25-year-old William Harvey
07:52applied to the college for a licence to practise medicine.
07:56He was an ideal candidate, ambitious, clever and obsessed with anatomy.
08:01During his career, he would either perform or witness the dissection
08:05of cats, guinea pigs, chickens, snakes, seals, moles,
08:12his wife's beloved pet parrot, a monkey, a human foetus,
08:17even the corpses of his own father and sister.
08:21Such cold-bloodedness served Harvey well.
08:24A ruthless careerist, he would go on to climb the medical hierarchy
08:28with the deftness of a steeplejacket.
08:32Harvey is a classic figure. I mean, he is a man of the establishment.
08:36He's not Culpepper. He's not someone who says,
08:39Well, I'm right, aren't I?
08:41He wants to be accepted by the establishment
08:44and he is very reluctant to criticise the establishment.
08:48Like all members of the College of Physicians,
08:51Harvey had been taught according to the theories
08:54of the ancient philosopher Galen.
08:56Galen had been a physician to Roman emperors during the 2nd century AD
09:00and more than 1,000 years later, his theories still underlay
09:04all medical training and practice in 17th century London.
09:08According to Galen, the body operated on a system of four humours,
09:12blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.
09:16This tied the human body into the prevailing view
09:19of how the universe worked.
09:21Everything in the cosmos fitted into the scheme,
09:24the four seasons, four ages of man
09:27and the four elements of fire, air, water and earth.
09:30The system dominated the physician's understanding
09:33of how the body worked and determined their diagnosis of illness.
09:37Disease occurs when your body goes out of balance,
09:40when you've got too much of one humour or too little of another.
09:43So what you do is get rid of some of the excess of a humour.
09:47So you might do this by bleeding a patient,
09:49by giving them something which will act as a laxative or make them vomit.
09:53And these can be quite extensive and disgusting things.
09:57You can really... You get accounts of people passing five or six stools
10:01in an hour, of people taking half a pint of blood.
10:04And this kind of real physical intervention to rebalance the body
10:09is what 17th century medicine is really about.
10:12The truth is that the alternatives were probably not a lot better.
10:15The major alternative in this period were chemical medicines,
10:18in particular the use of things such as mercury and opiates in medicines.
10:23And some of these were almost certainly as harmful as the Galenic opposites.
10:27The Galenic approach allowed doctors to define the temperament of each patient
10:32and treat them accordingly.
10:34The doctor would look on the patient and try to ascertain the patient's temperament.
10:39Was the patient a pasty phlegmatic full of catarrh
10:43that needed heating up in order to get it out of the body?
10:47Was the patient an overactive, angry and irascible choleric type
10:52who needed cooling down?
10:54He needed the liver opening with bitter remedies to drain heat from the body.
10:58The teachings of Galen were rigorously upheld by the College of Physicians.
11:03Their influence was enormous
11:05as the members drew their authority directly from the king.
11:09They controlled the practice of medicine throughout London.
11:12But one group would dare to question this authority.
11:16The Society of Apothecaries was formed in 1617.
11:20The Apothecaries were a powerful guild in their own right.
11:23They had even acquired a grand coat of arms
11:26featuring the sun god Apollo astride the dragon of disease
11:30and the motto, I am called throughout the world the bringer of aid.
11:35Every apothecary who traded in the city had to be a member of this guild.
11:39Rich patients from all over London would go to the Apothecaries
11:42to get their physicians' prescriptions made up.
11:45Walking into a 17th century London apothecary shop
11:48would have been quite a strange experience.
11:50In front of you there'd have been rows of jars, sacks and boxes
11:54full of strange and exotic ingredients.
11:57Things like human flesh, seeds from the Orient,
12:00odd bits of viper dried to treat poison.
12:03Above you there might have been a stuffed alligator
12:06or fish suspended from the ceiling.
12:09It had the aspect of a laboratory
12:12because there would be cauldrons brewing, liquids distilling,
12:16herbs in other big containers brewing up.
12:20Slightly witchy in some ways.
12:23The shop would have been full of smells,
12:26full of the sound of grinding and fires burning,
12:30and there'd have been this incredible exotic rich aroma
12:34which would have surrounded you when you entered.
12:36The grand and learned physicians looked down on these apothecaries
12:40as their servants, the cooks who simply made up their precious recipes.
12:44But as the apothecaries became more successful,
12:47the physicians were unnerved by their increasing independence.
12:50So in 1618 the physicians produced a Bible of medicine
12:54called the Pharmacopoeia Londonensis.
12:57It dictated the precise ingredients to be used for each remedy.
13:01They even procured a royal proclamation threatening punishment
13:05for any apothecary who didn't use the new book.
13:08One of the masters of the apothecaries was alleged to have said,
13:14from small beer and the tyranny of the College of Physicians,
13:18good Lord, deliver us.
13:21And it wasn't just the apothecaries who were under pressure from the physicians.
13:25There was a huge demand for basic medical care from the poor
13:28who couldn't afford expensive physicians or exotic medicines.
13:32But anyone practising without a licence
13:34infringed the College's monopoly on medical practice.
13:38To crack down on this, the physicians had their own police force, the censors.
13:42William Harvey had secured one of these plumb positions for himself
13:46and spent his time seeking out and summoning illegal practitioners
13:50to face the judgment of the College.
13:53All kinds of people find themselves called up for the College of Physicians
13:56for practising medicine.
13:58This ranges from old women who just practise in small neighbourhoods,
14:01perhaps using milk and bread poultices for children's ailments,
14:04to astrologers and magicians who speak with angels
14:07to work out what's going wrong with people and draw horoscopes,
14:10to the most learned of foreign physicians who've travelled from Italy and France
14:14and are bringing the kind of modern skilled medicine
14:17that the College of Physicians itself would like to practise.
14:20The censors could fine or even jail illegal practitioners,
14:24but, ironically, Harvey and the other physicians responsible for these crackdowns
14:28were about to come under scrutiny themselves
14:31over the treatment they'd given to their most powerful patient,
14:34the King of England.
14:39In 1625, King James was staying at his rural retreat in Hertfordshire
14:43when he was struck down by malaria.
14:46His physicians, including William Harvey, were unconcerned
14:49as the disease was relatively common and considered treatable.
14:53But when James began to suffer seizures, they panicked.
14:56A strip of leather impregnated with a medicinal syrup
14:59was laid across his abdomen, but that seemed to induce a series of fits.
15:04They tried prescribing soothing drinks or posits, but his fever intensified.
15:09Bloodletting brought no relief and his tongue swelled up so he could no longer speak.
15:14Within the week, the King was dead.
15:19James's death required a scapegoat.
15:23Rumours soon began to circulate that the King had been poisoned
15:27and Harvey and the other physicians became suspects.
15:30There were whispers of a Catholic plot at court.
15:33But Harvey was saved by an unlikely champion.
15:37James's heir, the new King Charles, refused to punish the physicians
15:41for his father's untimely death.
15:44Henceforth, Harvey became one of Charles's most loyal and devoted servants
15:48during what would be one of the roughest reigns in English history.
15:52Charles creates himself almost as a deliberate antithesis of his father.
15:57James had been a rambunctious, crude, horseplay kind of man.
16:03He liked the company of his male favourites.
16:06He liked to romp with them.
16:09Charles is cold, remote, distant.
16:13He speaks very little.
16:16He had a severe stutter, which meant that he was very shy in public.
16:20And as a result, he was a very private, quiet, withdrawn kind of man.
16:24He looked for love, but found it very difficult to come by.
16:27A marriage was arranged for Charles
16:29to the young Catholic Henrietta Maria of France.
16:32The Queen's religion made her intensely unpopular,
16:35but all protest to Charles fell on deaf ears.
16:39He is a man who seems very reluctant to take advice.
16:44Charles makes up his own mind and, in few words, directs policy.
16:50Sometimes very effectively.
16:52Often completely out of touch
16:55with the political realities of England in the 1620s.
16:59Just weeks after arriving in England,
17:01the King's new wife, Queen Henrietta Maria of France,
17:05embarked on a river trip up the Thames aboard the Royal Barge.
17:09But as the party glided through the lush countryside
17:12on their way to Oxford,
17:14the gentle pleasures of a summer cruise
17:16turned into what one witness described
17:18as a cold and miserable entertainment.
17:21The Queen looked out upon lines of starving refugees along the riverbanks.
17:26They were Londoners desperately fleeing
17:28one of the deadliest outbreaks of plague in the city's history.
17:33Something like plague is always divine vengeance.
17:37God is punishing or testing people.
17:41How you read it might very well depend on your pre-existing assumptions
17:46about what's gone wrong with England.
17:48For Puritans, it is pretty clear that the plague is divine punishment
17:53for the failure of the English Church to purge itself of Catholic relics.
17:59There were mutterings among the Puritans that King Charles' reign was cursed.
18:04One London craftsman, Nehemiah Wallington,
18:07echoed the fears of the Puritan masses
18:09when he wrote that the plague was the symptom of a deeper malaise.
18:13All around him, Wallington witnessed idolatry, superstition,
18:17whoredoms, adulteries, fornication, murders, oppressions,
18:21drunkenness, lying, slandering,
18:23stopping the mouths of God's prophets and servants
18:26and other gross secret sins.
18:29As the deadly bubonic plague advanced,
18:32the bells tolled and the streets were filled
18:34with the smoke of rosemary and frankincense to cleanse the air.
18:38People were holding their arms out as though carrying pails of milk,
18:42a sign of the first twinges of the plague sores appearing under their arms.
18:46Animals lay dead in the streets
18:48and bills of mortality were nailed to the doors of the churches,
18:52telling of the 60 children found dead in one alley,
18:55more than 50 pregnant women who died in Shoreditch.
18:58By the end of summer, the number of recorded deaths was approaching 45,000.
19:06During Plague London, in many ways, shut down.
19:08The rich left, many of the middle and class would go,
19:11and trade and business in general would grind to a halt.
19:14Now, this left the poor, who were, after all,
19:16the majority of the population of the city, really struggling to survive.
19:19Not only did they have to face this disease,
19:21but they needed to find somewhere to get food,
19:23they needed to find some way to work.
19:26So, for the poor, it was a double whammy.
19:29The physicians joined the exodus.
19:31They had selected just four members to remain in the city,
19:34one of whom was William Harvey.
19:36But as far as the poor were concerned,
19:38Harvey and his colleagues were in irrelevance.
19:41They were still charging huge fees, even during the Plague year.
19:44Only the wealthy could afford their treatments.
19:47Decker, the playwright, said,
19:49none thrive but apothecaries, cooks, butchers and coffin makers.
19:55Well, he was absolutely right, because the city had been deserted.
20:00So it was the apothecaries who then came to the fore.
20:03And in that Plague, they really filled the breach.
20:08All kinds of different practitioners would emerge.
20:11Among them were some apothecaries who were trying to make reputations,
20:14but all kinds of different people would offer remedies
20:17from exotic, complicated recipes like London treacle
20:21to very simple preservatives,
20:23such as simply a leaf of rue wrapped in a raisin and held in your mouth.
20:26Of course, there was no cure for the Plague,
20:28but these practitioners were still risking their lives to treat the dying.
20:32It was these men that young Culpepper would later emulate,
20:35men who refused to abandon the poor and vulnerable.
20:39As the houses of the infected were boarded up,
20:41they were the only comfort for ordinary tradesmen like Wallington
20:45in their hour of desperate need.
20:48The woodturner Wallington and his family survived those dreadful summer months
20:52and in October 1625, to celebrate their blessed deliverance,
20:56went to Lewisham, a pleasant rural suburb overlooking London.
21:01"'We were all very merry together,' he wrote in his journal.
21:04"'The Lord's name be praised evermore. Amen.'"
21:07Not amen.
21:09The following day, Wallington's maid felt a pricking sensation in her neck.
21:14That night, his daughter Elizabeth suffered a series of agonising spasms.
21:19She was dead within the week.
21:21A few weeks later, his only son John succumbed.
21:24And so ended his miserable life,
21:27the inconsolable Wallington noted in his diary.
21:39Angelica.
21:41Angelica resists poison by defending and comforting the heart, blood and spirits.
21:46It doth alike against the plague and all epidemical diseases
21:50if the root be taken to the weight of half a dram at a time
21:54with some good treacle in cardis water
21:57and the party thereupon lay to sweat in his bed.
22:09In 1634, Culpeper left Sussex to come to London,
22:13that refuge of the dispossessed.
22:16He took his first step into the world of medicine
22:19through the door of Simon White's apothecary shop at Temple Bar.
22:23The Society of Apothecaries had arranged for Culpeper to become his apprentice.
22:28Culpeper paid £50 to be bound to a master.
22:31Then that master took you into his house.
22:34You lived as one of the family.
22:36You weren't to marry during the seven- or eight-year period, or you'd be out.
22:40You would have to accompany him on visits, maybe help him with bloodletting.
22:44And he, the master, taught the apprentice all the skills of the apothecary,
22:49how to compound the medicines, make the potions, the pills, brew up the herbs.
22:55And it was quite tough.
22:58And Culpeper proved to be useful in other ways.
23:01The physician's Bible, the Pharma Capia, had been written in Latin,
23:05which meant that most apothecaries couldn't read it.
23:08Fortunately for his master, Culpeper was able to translate,
23:12as he had studied Latin at Cambridge.
23:15Culpeper also learned about many of the ingredients
23:18during the apothecary's herb-gathering expeditions.
23:24It always had to be on a summer morning.
23:26They would gather at St Paul's Churchyard, for instance,
23:29and go to Hampstead Heath or Greenwich or Putney,
23:33and the botanical demonstrator would find the plants and herbs,
23:37show them to the apprentices, tell them their Latin names,
23:41and what they were used for, whether it was the root or the flower or the leaves,
23:45how they were used in medicine.
23:47Then they would usually adjourn,
23:49and later on they sort of got beer and bread,
23:52and I think they were slightly rowdy occasions.
23:54I know on one herb-rising,
23:56an apprentice capsized in the boat on the river and nearly drowned.
24:00As well as local herbs,
24:02the apothecaries also needed good supplies of foreign spices and plants for their medicines.
24:08One of Culpeper's jobs would have been to accompany his master
24:11down to the Thames quayside to haggle with traders.
24:15You've got ships coming in from all over the world.
24:18You've got great vessels coming in from the Indies,
24:20which are carrying resins, seeds and barks.
24:23You've got ships coming from the Spice Islands.
24:25You've also got vessels coming from the Spanish Americas,
24:28where you've got new medicines such as cinchona, which is now quinine,
24:31which is becoming used in early modern medicine.
24:34And you've also got vessels coming in from the Mediterranean,
24:37from Amsterdam, carrying loads of rhubarb, of stones,
24:40of all the kinds of herbs and spices that are used in early modern medicine.
24:44As London's population and economy grew with influxes of immigrants and goods,
24:49the society of apothecaries thrived,
24:52but its members were always being keenly watched.
24:55The censors at the College of Physicians
24:58had grown jealous of the apothecaries' commercial success.
25:01They also suspected that many of them were illegally prescribing their own medicines,
25:06so they began to raid their shops and private rooms,
25:09looking for evidence of illicit trade,
25:11smashing anything they deemed suspicious.
25:14Harvey was at the heart of the crackdown.
25:17The College of Physicians is constantly trying to gain control of the apothecaries,
25:21to be able to regulate what they're doing, who they are and how they're trained.
25:25The apothecaries are saying no.
25:28They're strongly resistant to the idea
25:30that they should be under the power of the College of Physicians.
25:33They want to be a guild of their own.
25:35They're autonomous, independent, they're citizens of London,
25:38and they know and believe they know exactly what they're doing.
25:41The physicians accused the apothecaries of selling adulterated drugs,
25:45while the apothecaries accused the physicians of ignorance and bullying.
25:49Culpeper, the young apprentice, was a witness to the whole unseemly spectacle.
25:56It wasn't just the medical establishment that was in turmoil.
26:00Resentment at the heavy hand of authority was building across the country.
26:04The king had found Parliament so unruly, he was refusing to allow it to assemble,
26:09which made his constant demands for money from his hard-pressed subjects
26:13seem all the more despotic.
26:15A clampdown by the king's bishops on religious dissent
26:18also aroused fears that the Church of England was becoming an outpost to the papacy
26:23and provoke growing militancy among a new breed of Protestant activists.
26:29The heart of religious radicalism in London was Coleman Street in the north of the city.
26:34This school of all ungodliness, as the church authorities called it,
26:38was where dissenters such as Anabaptists and millenarians
26:41set up secret presses in garrets and cellars to spread the word of their god.
26:46Such was the fervour of anti-establishment feeling
26:49that when John Lamb, a royal favourite, strayed into the area,
26:53a mob of apprentices chased him and stoned him to death.
26:57Culpeper had started to visit the dissenters in Coleman Street regularly
27:02and came under the spell of the radical Puritan preacher John Goodwin,
27:06known as the Great Red Dragon for his inflammatory views.
27:10Goodwin argued that no authority, either political or religious, was beyond question.
27:16Culpeper was captivated.
27:18Radicals like Culpeper were enormously brave
27:22because in the 1630s, when Charles I and his Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud,
27:28were running church and state,
27:31people who dissented from their way of doing things
27:35could find themselves having their ears cut off.
27:38Radicals believed that England in particular had a destiny
27:41to be the home of saved people, the only saved people,
27:45in a sort of swamp of evil potpourri.
27:48So they saw themselves as moral crusaders.
27:52Wormwood. Wormwood is a herb of Mars.
27:56It cleanseth the body of cholera, provokes urine, helps surfeits,
28:00it causeth an appetite to meat.
28:03The sun never shone upon a better herb for the yellow jaundice than this is.
28:07It groweth upon the tops of mountains.
28:10There it is natural, but usually nursed up in gardens
28:14for the use of the apothecaries in London.
28:18In 1636, Culpeper was abandoned by the very man
28:22who had been his father figure and guide.
28:25Simon White absconded to Ireland with all his apprenticeship fees,
28:29leaving Culpeper homeless and penniless.
28:32Some apprentices were quite badly treated.
28:34Some were beaten, some weren't kept dressed properly,
28:37some weren't given very good food.
28:39But Culpeper seems to have been unfortunate in losing his money to his master.
28:43For the next few years, he was passed from master to master,
28:47where he learnt little and earned less.
28:50And then his beloved mother discovered a lump in her breast.
28:56The physician who attended his mother prescribed an ointment of red lead
29:00mixed with camphor, wax and oil of roses.
29:03The plan was to reduce the inflammation by applying it to the tumour.
29:08Culpeper watched helplessly as her condition deteriorated.
29:12Her concoction had no more effect than rubbing on a rotten apple, he noted.
29:17Soon after, she died, and so did any lingering respect
29:20her son might have felt for physicians.
29:24Culpeper would be bound no more.
29:26Let down by corrupt apothecaries and feckless physicians,
29:29he abandoned his apprenticeship.
29:31He became a renegade, prepared to flout convention
29:34and challenge the establishment.
29:36He set up an illegal medical practice in Spitalfields, beyond the city walls.
29:41If Culpeper had been caught practising illegally,
29:43he would have been brought before the court.
29:45He would probably have been fined.
29:47And if he'd done it again, a repeat offence,
29:49the punishments could become more severe and he could face a spell of imprisonment.
29:52People did.
29:54After so much misfortune, Culpeper's luck had finally turned.
29:58He married Alice Field, the daughter of a wealthy merchant,
30:01whose dowry may have enabled him to set up his practice.
30:05His enterprise was timely.
30:07By the early 1640s, medical facilities in the capital were at breaking point,
30:12and Culpeper promoted himself as a physician for the ordinary man.
30:17People came from far and wide to Culpeper's illegal practice here in Spitalfields.
30:22He offered them not only cheap, locally produced herbal remedies,
30:25but what he called an infusion of hope.
30:28What made his practice really radical was that he pledged to treat everyone,
30:32no matter how poor.
30:34No man deserved to starve, he wrote,
30:36to pay a proud, insulting, domineering physician.
30:41His practice became so popular that as many as 40 patients
30:45could come through his door in the morning.
30:47Culpeper used local herbs because these were the cheapest option available,
30:52and his supplies were growing all over the city.
30:55He travelled to Finsbury Fields for star thistles,
30:58Bow for wild honeysuckle,
31:00Hampstead for St John's wort,
31:02and from this bounty he made up simples, syrups, pills, juleps, pessaries and oils.
31:09For instance, an amenagogue is a herb that helps to encourage regular menstruation
31:14where it might be deficient or indeed absent.
31:17Tansy would be one herb that could be used in that way.
31:20Another is a cleansing action, such as tansy again and willow.
31:25They helped cleanse material from the body
31:28without actually being full-on laxatives.
31:31I'm sure that they were very effective,
31:33and what's more, his patients believed they were effective, which always helps.
31:38And as you know now, people swear by St John's wort or evening primrose oil,
31:43and we know scientifically that willow has been very useful in aspirin,
31:49and yew goes into tamoxifen, which is used in the treatment of cancer.
31:54Culpeper was quite skilled in all these things.
31:58But the apothecary's remedies were not without their limitations.
32:02What they couldn't do is treat bacterial infections.
32:05They had no idea of bacteria, for that matter,
32:07or any of the more serious diseases that we can perhaps now treat today.
32:11But what gave Culpeper a big advantage
32:13was that he actually bothered to see patients in person
32:16rather than just examine a chamber pot of their urine,
32:19a practice of many unscrupulous quacks and even some physicians.
32:24He wrote,
32:38The most controversial aspect of Culpeper's medical practice
32:42was his use of astrology.
32:44Critics seized on it as evidence that he was a quack.
32:47He saw it as a powerful tool,
32:49helping not only to explain the medicinal quality of herbs,
32:52but to diagnose disease.
32:54But his interest also had a political dimension.
32:57Astrology was the counterculture of its age.
33:00It used language and ideas
33:02that the authorities couldn't understand or police.
33:05It was the knowledge system of outcasts.
33:08One of his basic beliefs was that you could interpret
33:12the condition of the patient by what was called decumperture,
33:16which is to see from the patient exactly the moment when the symptoms began
33:20and then cast a figure of the heavens
33:23to see the state of the stars at that particular moment.
33:26And from reading that chart, you could then tell what the disease was
33:30and you could also do a prognosis.
33:32Is the patient going to recover or not?
33:34There were plenty of astrologers, astrological physicians who did this,
33:38but this puts him at odds with the medical establishment.
33:43Culpeper was drawing on an ancient philosophy
33:46that had a revival in his time
33:48that linked the stars above and indeed God,
33:51who put those stars in motion,
33:53to everything that existed on Earth.
33:55For instance, Saturn would rule the spleen in the body
33:59and a herb to cleanse the spleen and to make it healthy again
34:03is a Saturn herb fumatory.
34:05Again, herbs of Venus were often used in gynaecology
34:09and a whole range of Venus herbs would be used
34:12to correct menstrual abnormalities.
34:15Balm.
34:16The Arabian physicians have extolled the virtues hereof to the skies.
34:20It is very good to help digestion and open obstructions of the brain.
34:24A cordle made with eggs and the juice thereof,
34:27putting to it some sugar and rose water,
34:30is good for women in childbed when the afterbirth is not thoroughly avoided.
34:34Let a syrup be kept in every gentlewoman's house
34:37to relieve the weak stomachs and sick bodies of their poor neighbours.
34:43While Culpeper was working with the poor and dispossessed,
34:46Harvey was ingratiating himself at the royal court.
34:50In December 1639, he secured the most desirable job in the medical world,
34:55personal physician to the king.
34:57He was given lodgings at Whitehall Palace, a generous pension
35:01and the opportunity to explore his passion for anatomy.
35:05The deer in the royal parks were the first to go under Harvey's knife
35:09in a series of landmark anatomical experiments
35:12investigating the way their embryos developed.
35:15Harvey also introduced to court a young man
35:18who was living proof of his circulation of the blood theory.
35:22A childhood injury had left Viscount Montgomery with a deep hole in his chest.
35:27Harvey invited the king to poke a finger into the hole
35:31and feel beneath a membrane of scar tissue the pumping of the young man's heart.
35:36The physician explained that the action was the heart pushing the blood into the arteries.
35:41At a stroke, Harvey had disproved Galen's theory about how the body worked
35:46and earned himself a place in history.
35:49The College of Physicians should have been appalled by this discovery
35:52of the circulation of the blood,
35:54as it entirely contradicted their Galenic theory of humours seeping through the body.
35:59But Harvey never forced his contemporaries
36:02to confront the revolutionary implications of his work.
36:05Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood,
36:08in terms of understanding how the body worked,
36:11was a major breakthrough.
36:13In terms of therapy, it probably had no effect whatsoever
36:16in terms of the way in which people were treated
36:18or the success with which they were treated.
36:20And even contemporaries themselves often recognised the fact.
36:23I think that Culpeper couldn't really have gone along
36:26with the fruits of Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood
36:30as it developed into a mechanistic model of human health.
36:35After all, Culpeper still believed in that fully alive cosmos
36:40that the human being found themselves in
36:43and that the heart, as the very core of the body and the seat of the emotions,
36:47was that microcosmic representative of the sun in the sky.
36:53Harvey's book, De Motu Cordis, about the circulation of the blood,
36:57was dedicated to the king.
36:59He wrote,
37:00''The heart of animals is the foundation of their life.
37:03''Likewise, the king is the foundation of his kingdoms,
37:06''the sun of his microcosm, the heart of his commonwealth.
37:09''From whence all power, all grace proceeds.''
37:12But not everyone was as loyal as the royal physician.
37:17Hemlock.
37:18The whole plant and every part are the strong, heady and ill-favoured scent,
37:22much offending the senses.
37:24Hemlock is exceedingly cold and very dangerous,
37:27especially to be taken inwardly.
37:29If any shall through mistake eat the herb hemlock instead of parsley,
37:33whereby happeneth a kind of frenzy as if they were stupefied or drunk,
37:37the remedy is to drink of the best and strongest pure wine.
37:41Saturn claims dominion over the herb.
37:45By 1640, Charles had enjoyed an 11-year period of personal rule,
37:50during which he became ever more dictatorial.
37:53He refused to summon Parliament
37:55and only relented when his military campaigns required money.
37:59The MPs met in November,
38:01and all the pent-up frustration of their years in the political wilderness
38:05produced an outpouring of protest,
38:07which they set down in a document
38:09A grand remonstrance is very significant.
38:11It purported to be a petition from Parliament to the king.
38:15In fact, it was an appeal to the people and was recognised as such.
38:19It was a document that listed the appalling government,
38:23misgovernment by Charles,
38:25the extraordinary achievements of Parliament,
38:27and then went on to argue there was still much to do.
38:30This was the first time in the history of England
38:33that such a document was presented to Parliament.
38:36And then went on to argue there was still much to do.
38:39This, whilst it was ostensibly to the king,
38:41was actually a rallying call to the people.
38:45In the winter of 1641,
38:47city crowds started to gather in the streets to voice their own grievances.
38:5130,000 apprentices signed petitions in support of Parliament.
38:55Culpeper joined a riotous mob that surged around the House of Commons
38:59demanding the ejection of the bishops and lords.
39:02A crowd of 2,000 men armed with clubs, swords and spears
39:06gathered in Cheapside and the MPs abandoned Westminster.
39:10On January 4th, the king panicked
39:13and ordered gunpowder and ammunition to be fetched from the tower.
39:17That night, provoked by rumours that Parliament planned to impeach his wife,
39:21the king charged five radical MPs with treason.
39:25As the sun rose on a tense city,
39:27the shops remained closed in anticipation of a bloody showdown.
39:31Charles marched to Westminster with 400 armed supporters.
39:35Brandishing their swords and pistols, they pushed their way into Parliament,
39:39but they were too late.
39:41All five MPs had already fled to a secret hideout in Cullman Street,
39:45that hotbed of radicalism.
39:47Furious and humiliated, the king withdrew.
39:51This is wonderful for his opponents, his radical opponents in Parliament.
39:56They escape to the city, they are feted by the city,
40:00the city train bands turn out,
40:02and the king, confronted by the loss of control of his own capital,
40:07first gets the queen away to the continent
40:10and secondly begins his march, moving up to York.
40:13The king abandons London into the hands of his enemies.
40:16It's a crucial moment in the history of the Civil War.
40:20The slide into civil war had begun.
40:22Culpeper and Harvey were both in London
40:25as the atmosphere grew increasingly tense.
40:28People are panic-buying food, they're panic-selling property,
40:32they're trying terribly hard to kind of spot the enemy coming,
40:36and it really is about hunting for Catholics in the woodwork,
40:39and anyone with remotely Catholic credentials
40:42is in serious trouble at this point.
40:44We know that the ministers are preaching a gospel of war.
40:48Curse ye meros, said the angel of the Lord,
40:51for he came not to help the Lord against the mighty.
40:55Londoners are being instructed by their ministers
40:58in the need for godly violence against the king.
41:01Thousands had already enlisted as part of a citizens' militia
41:05known as the Trained Bands.
41:07The homes of royal sympathisers were searched and ransacked.
41:10Harvey's apartments in Whitehall were attacked
41:13and his research notes destroyed.
41:15The king's physician fled the city to join his royal master.
41:20Harvey was no warrior.
41:22He knew that war destroyed order,
41:24stirred emotions and interrupted his studies,
41:27but his loyalty to the king
41:29meant that he found himself here at Edge Hill in October 1642
41:33during the first engagement of the Civil War.
41:36He was put in charge of the royal children.
41:39As the bullets began to fly, he ended up hiding with them in a hedge,
41:43reading from a book to keep their spirits up.
41:46Then a cannonball exploded nearby,
41:48prompting them to flee behind royalist lines.
41:51That night, after the parliamentarians had been forced to retreat,
41:55Harvey tended to the dying and wounded.
41:58He'd never dreamt that his physician's training
42:01would be used to treat the victims of a civil war in his own country.
42:07As the winter of 1642 set in,
42:10lurid rumours began to circulate in London of royalist activities.
42:14The Earl of Cumberland was said to be cutting off the hands of anyone
42:18who refused to lend money to the king's cause.
42:21And at Brentford, 20 parliamentary sympathisers
42:24were allegedly tied up and thrown into the Thames.
42:27There were ominous portents, too.
42:30In Norfolk, the shattered bodies of a flock of rooks
42:33were found scattered beneath a tree.
42:35There were flashes of fire in the sky
42:37as if heaven was rehearsing the terrible conflict about to erupt on earth.
42:41Throughout the turmoil, Culpepper was practising medicine in London,
42:45but this was an age of betrayal and denunciation.
42:48In the febrile atmosphere,
42:50one of his patients accused Culpepper of being a witch.
42:54An accusation of witchcraft could be made by a disappointed client.
42:58One of the cases that ends in the execution of a witch,
43:02Joan Peterson of Shadwell.
43:04Peterson is executed because she cures a man,
43:09he refuses to pay her, she curses him,
43:13and he's left paralysed.
43:16And those become the facts upon which she is prosecuted.
43:20Now, clearly, I mean, he had turned to her, he hadn't paid up,
43:24and he then explains his subsequent illness in terms of her malice.
43:29That's the kind of situation that could occur.
43:32Culpepper was acquitted of the charges of witchcraft,
43:35but he was soon under attack again,
43:37this time from the Society of Apothecaries,
43:40as they tried to clamp down on his illegal practice.
43:43Restless and radicalised, Culpepper joined the Trained Bands
43:47and in August 1643 marched out of London
43:50to fight for the parliamentarians.
43:55Culpepper was absolutely typical of the Trained Bands
43:58in that the majority of the Trained Bands were godly believers
44:02who saw themselves as fighting for God
44:04against the evil forces of Antichrist.
44:07And Culpepper's a part of a crucial military force as well.
44:11The Trained Bands were the only people in parliament's First Army
44:14that had had any proper military training,
44:16the only infantry who'd had any proper military training.
44:19And they were absolutely crucial at holding off the Royalist Army
44:22for those first couple of important years of the war
44:25so that the country didn't just cave in immediately
44:27when Charles raised his standard.
44:30Legend has it that as the parliamentary troops
44:33made their way towards the town of Newbury,
44:35they came across a witch walking on water.
44:38Convinced she had been sent by the devil,
44:40the terrified soldiers set about trying to kill her.
44:43But before she could be dispatched,
44:45she prophesied that the parliamentarians would win the coming battle.
44:49Culpepper was among the troops who fought here at Newbury that day.
44:53The brutal struggle produced thousands of casualties.
44:57Corpses littered these fields,
44:59including six men who had been decapitated by a single cannon shot.
45:03Their burst skulls lay strewn on the ground
45:06like a row of scythed poppy heads.
45:09The parliamentarians had paid a heavy price for their victory.
45:20The wounds inflicted by civil war were exceptionally horrible.
45:23People tend to think of civil war battles as nearly bloodless
45:26and, oh, my goodness, they weren't.
45:28Sergeant Henry Foster, describing the First Battle of Newbury,
45:31says that when the cannon played on his regiment,
45:35it was somewhat dreadful when men's bowels and brains flew in our faces.
45:43There's also descriptions from civil war surgeons
45:46of men with their faces shot off,
45:48men whose arms were literally blown off by misfiring weapons
45:52where the gunpowder exploded and the weapon didn't go off.
45:55Culpepper survived the battle,
45:57but it left him with a serious chest injury
45:59from which he would never fully recover.
46:01He joined the survivors on the back of a wagon
46:04for the rough ride home to London.
46:06Like Harvey, Culpepper's fighting days were over.
46:13Daisy. The greater wild daisy is a wound herb of good respect
46:17often used in those drinks or sells that are for wounds either inward or outward.
46:22The juice or distilled water of these or the small daisies
46:25doth much temper the heat of collar
46:28and refresheth the liver and other inward parts.
46:31The leaves, bruised and applied to any other parts that are swollen and hot,
46:35doth resolve it and temper the head.
46:39Amid the chaos of civil war,
46:41as the fate of the monarchy hung in the balance,
46:44people on both sides were emboldened by the exhortations of the astrologers.
46:49The civil war was a period of enormous excitement and fear, of course, and uncertainty.
46:53Who was going to win? Was London itself safe?
46:56Or might London be attacked and sacked by a cavalier army?
46:59So astrologers on both sides were churning out propaganda,
47:03mainly having an effect on morale, public morale.
47:06Our side is going to win. The stars are on our side. We're going to succeed.
47:10William Lilly and George Wharton were probably the two most influential and successful.
47:15Lilly as a champion of Parliament, George Wharton as a champion of the cavalier side.
47:21Lilly's pamphlets had enormous influence and caused enormous notoriety.
47:26Some of them we know sold out within a matter of three days from publication.
47:30We have accounts of members of Parliament sitting in the House of Commons itself
47:34reading and discussing these predictions as soon as they came out.
47:38So he was a major player as a propagandist for the Parliamentary side.
47:43Culpeper's interest in astrology and radical politics made him a natural collaborator for Lilly,
47:48and in 1644 they worked together on the controversial book A Prophecy of the White King.
47:54It outlined for the first time an idea that until then few had dared even contemplate,
48:00that the civil war would culminate in the death of the monarch.
48:04William Lilly had declared that God is on our side.
48:08The constellations of heaven, after a while, will totally appear for the Parliament.
48:13Lilly was indeed right.
48:16The royal defeat at the Battle of Naseby in June 1645 sealed the fate of the King's cause.
48:22Nearly 80,000 of the population were dead and a further 100,000 had died of disease.
48:29A greater proportion of the population than died in either of the world wars of the 20th century.
48:35There would be no more talk of the divine right of kings.
48:39Charles was put on trial for his life and held accountable for the slaughter of the civil war.
48:48On the 30th of January 1649 the King was taken to Whitehall.
48:53His fate was sealed.
48:59The execution took place outside the Banqueting House.
49:03Extraordinary icon of Stuart monarchy.
49:06The King would have proceeded through one of the high windows onto a stage
49:11and on the stage are the two figures of the executioners, both masked.
49:15No one knows who they were.
49:18Charles was obliged to lie down full length.
49:22There was a fear that he would struggle and there was an attempt made to ensure
49:26that if he did so he could be tied down.
49:29He lay with his neck on the block and the executioner took off his head in a single blow.
49:40He raised the head in the traditional form.
49:43Here is the head of a traitor.
49:45But a great groan burst through the crowd at that moment
49:49and almost immediately the troops turn and drive the crowd back down Whitehall in both directions,
49:56clearing the scene.
49:58There is a clear sense that no one wants a martyrdom to have occurred
50:02with sacred blood being collected by the mob.
50:08Regicide was an unprecedented terrifying act.
50:12The sun at the centre of the social order had been extinguished.
50:15The heart of the nation had been stopped.
50:18The astrologers were alarmed at the cosmic convulsion that seemed to have been unleashed.
50:23A bright falling star was seen over Whitehall that evening.
50:27A whale that had beached itself at Dover died within an hour of the king
50:31and a man who had bragged about bringing Charles to the scaffold
50:35was found dead with his eyes pecked out by crows.
50:39The world, in a popular phrase of the time, had been turned upside down.
50:48At first, the new Commonwealth seemed to have little effect on the world of medicine.
50:53Royalist doctors were included once more in the proceedings of the College of Physicians,
50:57but some things had changed.
50:59The star chamber that had been responsible for censoring publications
51:03had been dismantled during the Civil War.
51:06Culpeper seized this opportunity to publish an English version of the Physicians' Bible,
51:11the Pharmacopoeia.
51:12It was an instant sensation.
51:14Culpeper's translation of the College of Physicians' Pharmacopoeia
51:17is one of the most successful medical books of all time.
51:20It was published in thousands and thousands of copies
51:22and spread this information around England
51:25in a way that it never had been before while it was in Latin.
51:28Understandably, the College was furious.
51:31Culpeper was determined to make accessible
51:34the kind of learning that he believed was essential to the living of a good life.
51:41He translated it, he simplified it, he added his own recipes to it.
51:46He believed that what God had provided through nature
51:50should be available to all people.
51:53The translation of the Pharmacopoeia is more important even as a symbol of change.
51:58It's saying that we can break down this monopoly,
52:01that you, individual people, should take more control of your health,
52:04should be able to go and, if you wish to, make your own medicines.
52:07And so I think symbolically it makes a major turning point.
52:10It was published in 1649,
52:13and thereafter there's a flood of vernacular translations
52:17and works on medicine between 1650-1660.
52:20It's just a huge outpouring of new writings.
52:24For the physicians, Culpeper's unauthorised translation
52:28of their treasured book was literary poison.
52:31It made medical information that had previously been the preserve
52:35of just 30 physicians available to anyone who could read English.
52:39As Culpeper made clear in the book's opening pages,
52:42it was part of a much wider campaign.
52:45The liberty of our Commonwealth, he wrote,
52:48is most infringed by three sorts of men.
52:51Priests, physicians, lawyers.
52:54The first to seize men in matters regarding their soul,
52:57the second in matters belonging to their bodies,
53:00the third in matters belonging to their estates.
53:03It was a declaration of war on the establishment.
53:07He comes across quite explicitly, in fact,
53:10as a champion of the little people, the plain man,
53:14and he says very proudly,
53:16I'm a plebeian, I stand for the plebeians,
53:19and a new age of freedom is dawning, the stars predict it.
53:22Arich.
53:24It smells like old rotten fish, or something worse.
53:27It grows usually upon dung hills.
53:29You can desire no good to your womb, but this herb will affect it.
53:33Therefore, if you love ease, keep a syrup always by you,
53:36made of the juice of this herb and sugar.
53:39Let such as be rich keep it for their poor neighbours
53:42and bestow it as freely as I bestow my studies upon them.
53:46The works of God are given freely to man.
53:49His medicines are common and cheap and easy to be found.
53:52Tis the medicines of the college of physicians
53:55that are so dear and scarce to find.
53:58His publishers inevitably clamoured for more
54:01from this unlikely literary star.
54:03Culpeper duly obliged with a directory for midwives,
54:07which dealt with many of the dangers
54:09and debunked some of the myths surrounding childbirth.
54:12He discredited the widely held view
54:15that infertility in women was a sign of diabolical possession
54:19and that sperm from the right testicle produced male babies.
54:23It was another instant bestseller.
54:26But while Culpeper prospered,
54:28Harvey's career had effectively ended with the death of the king.
54:31His pioneering work on the circulation of the blood
54:34was never fully understood by his contemporaries,
54:36though it would make him famous long after his death.
54:39Culpeper, on the other hand, was a celebrity.
54:42His next book, The English Physician,
54:44was a complete guide to English medicinal herbs,
54:47which he deliberately priced at only three pence
54:50so that even the poor could afford it.
54:52In books like The English Physician,
54:54he gave people the tools and the knowledge
54:56so that they could practise medicine for themselves and their family
54:59wherever they were in England.
55:01The book was simple and accessible.
55:03It described the appearance of the herbs,
55:06where and when they should be picked,
55:08their medicinal virtues and their astrological properties.
55:11It was his biggest hit yet,
55:13selling as far afield as colonial America,
55:16and it secured his reputation as the great champion of medical freedom.
55:20Culpeper wasn't just a herbalist.
55:23In many respects, his herbal practice and his translations
55:26were a means to a further end, a much more important end for him, I think,
55:29and that was the promotion of a greater social egalitarianism
55:33and a greater care and concern for the poor.
55:35I think Culpeper's reputation must be as a rebel,
55:40and not just as a rebel apothecary,
55:43but for his political views, his religious views.
55:47Culpeper was a pain in the arse.
55:50A difficult man in every respect.
55:53A man who was extremely self-righteous
55:56in terms of his various feuds with alternative practitioners.
56:03Crude, vituperative in his abuse of them.
56:07And yet he is a very admirable man.
56:10Again, he put his money where his mouth was.
56:14He did provide services for the poor.
56:17He made accessible to the poor
56:20the kinds of information that he believed they needed.
56:25Ironically, the man who spent so much of his life
56:28trying to shield ordinary people from the miseries of disease
56:31couldn't save his own family.
56:33He and Alice produced seven children.
56:36Only one, Mary, would survive to adulthood.
56:39On 10 January 1654, aged just 37, Culpeper died of tuberculosis.
56:46Complicated by the chest wound he'd received during the Civil War
56:49and no doubt a lifetime's devotion to the herb tobacco.
56:53But his book, The English Physician,
56:55would go on to become the most successful non-religious English book of all time,
57:00remaining in continuous print for more than 350 years.
57:07In many respects, Culpeper's true legacy lies here,
57:11in the bustling corridors of an NHS hospital.
57:14By making health a political issue,
57:16by arguing that medical knowledge was a public asset
57:19rather than a commercial secret,
57:21Culpeper laid the foundations for reforms
57:24that would culminate in the creation of the modern National Health Service.
57:28If Culpeper were alive today,
57:30he'd probably be standing outside with the smokers.
57:33But his heart would belong here,
57:35in the bosom of an establishment devoted to providing health care to all
57:39rather than just a privileged few.
57:45MUSIC
57:58Next tonight, the rise of the robots here on BBC4,
58:01exploring hyper-evolution and the problems of the future.
58:14MUSIC