In the medieval monasteries learning of all sorts were encouraged, the monks and nuns copied and translated large numbers of manuscripts. The philosophical works of Aristotle, Plato, the Corpus Hermeticum, Euclid’s geometry and other texts were all incorporated to varying degrees into Catholic theology. 

Out of it emerged the Three World View of the medieval world, the Seven Liberal Arts which ultimately underpinned theology, law and medicine. The writings of Hippocrates and Galen naturally dove-tailed into the evolving cosmology. 

Consequently, herbal medicine flourished within the Gothic era, with monks and nuns tending to the sick as a part their service in the community. It was this knowledge within the medieval era that Culpeper was trying to recreate in his writings for the common good of people, without the barrier of having to be classically trained in order to study it.

The workshop will look at the political factors that have conspired against the loss of this knowledge, including the Witch Hunts, Black Death, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the birth of the Pharmaceutical Industry. 

It will elucidate this inherent philosophy as seen in a decumbiture chart, looking at the assessment of a patient’s vitality, its strength in relation to the disease, the nature of the illness, its course and prognosis, and last but not least the principles of sympathy and antipathy used to select herbs to strengthen the vitality and counter the illness. 

The palmar lines are flow patterns of vital force on the palm. They provide an instant visual image of the quality of the patient’s consciousness that you are dealing with. This explains the techniques to make quick, simple, yet profound clinical observations from the palmar lines. Learn why Paracelsus said, “No physician was properly trained unless they could diagnose from the lines of the palm or from the physiognomy of the body.”