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Nicholas Culpeper’s herbal (cat. 47), a compendium of natural cures, gives its reader tools for self-diagnosis and self-healing. The reader of this book looked toward a future self and also measured his or her present self against an implied norm, such that anger, sorrow or melancholy, for example, could be understood as conditions to cure. While books like this allowed readers to be their own physicians, they also subjected them to norms of health that potentially marked everyday emotions and reactions as symptoms of pathology.  potentially marked everyday emotions and reactions as symptoms of pathology.

Figure 52 Nicholas Culpeper’s herbal (cat. 47), a compendium of natural cures, gives its reader tools for self-diagnosis and self-healing. The reader of this book looked toward a future self and also measured his or her present self against an implied norm, such that anger, sorrow or melancholy, for example, could be understood as conditions to cure. While books like this allowed readers to be their own physicians, they also subjected them to norms of health that potentially marked everyday emotions and reactions as symptoms of pathology. potentially marked everyday emotions and reactions as symptoms of pathology.