Influenced during his apprenticeship by the radical preacher John Goodwin, who said no authority was above question, Culpeper became a radical republican and opposed the "closed shop" of medicine enforced by the censors of the College of Physicians. In his youth, Culpeper translated medical and herbal texts such as the "London Pharmacopaeia" from Latin for his master. It was during the political turmoil of the English civil war, when the College of Physicians was unable to enforce its ban on the publication of medical texts, that Culpeper deliberately chose to publish his translations in vernacular English as self-help medical guides for use by the poor who could not afford to consult expensive physicians. He followed them up with a manual on childbirth and with his main work, "The English Physician", which was deliberately sold cheaply. It eventually became available as far afield as colonial America and has been in print continually since the 17th century.