[Featured Lot] Culpeper, Nicholas & Ebenezer Sibly. Culpeper's English Physician; and Complete Herbal. To Which Ar...

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Sibly (1751-1799/1800) "Famous eighteenth-century astrologer...he is believed to have been born in Bristol, England. He came to London to study surgery and in 1792 graduated as doctor of medicine from King's College, Aberdeen, Scotland...practised both medicine and astrology after graduation from King's College in Aberdeen...(he) styled himself an "astro-philosopher."[Ency. of Occultism & Parapsychology] 

"..it would be quite incorrect to dismiss Sibly simply as an occultist. It is true that he was deeply convinced of the need to search for truth in the works of older alchemists, natural magicians, and astrologers. He wrote with conviction of the vital spirit and the anima mundi--and of sympathetic forces that bound together the great and small worlds. Yet, Sibly also felt comfortable with the most recent scientific journals and he sought to accommodate this research to his own world view. Heberden, Newton, Priestly, and Lavoisier were no less important to him than Aristotle, Hermes Trismegistus, Khunrath, and Paracelsus. Even more important, the recent work of Mesmer seemed to offer the most powerful proof of his own cosmic interpretation of man and nature." [Alan Debus quoted in Godwin, Theosophical Enlightenment]