Culpeper wrote a number of medical works which do not concern us here, but his name will always be associated with his Herbal. His reason for having written it he affirms to be that, of the operation of herbs by the stars he found few authors had written, "and those as full of nonsense and contradiction as an Egg is full of meat. This not being pleasing and less profitable to me, I consulted with my two brothers Dr. Reason and Dr. Experience and took a voyage to visit my Mother Nature, by whose advice together with the help of Dr. Diligence I at last obtained my desire and, being warned by Mr. Honesty (a stranger in our days) to publish it to the world, I have done it." It is impossible to read any part of this absurd book without a vision arising of the old rogue standing at the street corner and not only collecting but holding an interested crowd of the common folk by the sort of arguments which they not only understand but appreciate. In his preface he warns his readers against the false copies of his book "that are printed of that letter the small Bibles are printed with ... there being twenty or thirty gross errors in every sheet." He is withering in his criticism of those who quote old authors as authorities. "They say Reason makes a man differ from a beast; if that be true, pray what are they that instead of Reason for their judgment quote old authors?" In his preface, as throughout his book, he affirms his belief in the connection between herbs and stars. Diseases, he asserts, vary according to the motions of the stars, "and he that would know the reason for the operation of the herbs must look up as high as the stars. It is essential to find out what planet has caused the disease and then by what planet the afflicted part of the body is governed. In the treatment of the disease the influence of the planet must be opposed by herbs under the influence of another planet, or in some cases by sympathy, that is each planet curing its own disease." Elsewhere he directs that plants must always be picked according to the planet that is in the ascendant. Culpeper asserts that herbs should be dried in the sun,[124] his ingenious reasoning being this:--"For if the sun draw away the virtues of the herb it must needs do the like by hay, which the experience of every farmer will explode for a notable piece of nonsense." He also pours scorn on those who say that the sap does not rise in the winter. Here his argument is even more remarkable, and yet one cannot help realising how effectual it would be with the class of folk with whom he dealt. "If the sap fall into the roots in the fall of the leaf and lies there all the winter then must the root grow all the winter, but the root grows not at all in the winter as experience teaches, but only in the summer. If you set an apple kernel in the spring you shall find the root to grow to a pretty bigness in the summer and be not a whit bigger next spring.