Born on 6 January 1874 at Ware, second child and eldest son of Millice Culpin LRCP & SEd, and Hannah Munsey his wife. He was educated at the Grocers Company's School, where he acquired his life-long interest in entomology. His father emigrated to Taringa, Queensland, Australia in search of health and practised there from about 1890. Culpin as a young man worked in gold mines, travelled to Cape York peninsula, and was for four years a schoolmaster there and at Townsville. In his late twenties he came home and entered the London Hospital Medical College. He was Buxton scholar in 1897, won the junior Letheby prize in 1898 and the senior in 1900, when he took first-class honours at the intermediate MB examination. He served as house surgeon, orthopaedic house surgeon, and resident anaesthetist at the London Hospital, and then went back to Queensland to practise. From 1908 to 1913 he practised successfully in China, and was very busy as a surgeon at various hospitals during the revolution of 1911-12, working particularly at the Shanghai-Nanking Railway Hospital. On the outbreak of war in 1914 he was commissioned a Captain in the RAMC, and served as a surgical specialist at the Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth in 1915 and in France 1916-17. Culpin was among the first who realised that "shell-shock" and the deep effects of fear in war, such as disordered action of the heart, were emotional disturbances, more acute than the anxiety neuroses of peace. His views were accepted and from 1917 till the end of the war he was a neurological specialist in the Army, and subsequently under the Ministry of Pensions. He did excellent work in this field, practising at Maghull near Liverpool, and collaborating with Drs Bernard Hart, T H Pear, and Aldren Turner. He wrote his thesis for the London doctorate on psychoneuroses of war. After his earlier experience in surgery and tropical medicine, Culpin proved a highly original and successful psychiatrist. He was appointed lecturer in psychoneurosis at the London Hospital in 1920, and built up a large private practice at 1 Queen Street. His methods were never spectacular, but he was a pioneer of dynamic psychology. He gave much time and thought for various public bodies. He acted for the Industrial Health Research Board in 1923 as an independent referee on the Report on telegraphists' cramp drawn up by Eric Farmer and May Smith. He helped to solve the problem of the causation of miners' nystagmus when serving on the British Medical Association's special committee on the subject; he also served on the committee of the psychological medicine group of the Association and on its committee on mental health. He was a frequent contributor to the professional journals and wrote several useful books. He was appointed lecturer in 1933 and professor in 1934 of medical and industrial psychology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and resigned in 1939. He was President of the British Psychological Society. His work on war neuroses was extensively used during the second world war. Culpin married in 1913 Ethel Maude daughter of E Dimery Bennett. They lived at Loughton and Park Village East, and latterly at 17a Hatfield Road, St Albans. He died suddenly on 14 September 1952 aged 78, survived by his wife and their daughter Frances, Mrs Stephen MacKeith. For all his love of controversy Culpin was a humble man, of strong moral and humanitarian compulsion, who achieved remarkable advances in psychology after an earlier period as a successful surgeon. His sound sense and wit endeared him to a group of colleagues, with whom he regularly lunched at the Royal Society of Medicine, for he was a first-rate talker. The natural history of birds and insects was his chief non-professional interest. Publications: *Psychoneuroses of war and peace*, London MD thesis. Cambridge University Press 1920. *Spiritualism and the new psychology*. London: E. Arnold 1920. *The nervous patient*. London: H. K. Lewis 1924. *Medicine and the man*. London: Kegan Paul 1927. *The nervous temperament*, with May Smith. Industrial Health Research Board, Report 61. HM Stationery Office, 1930. *Recent advances in the study of the psychoneuroses*. London: Churchill 1931. *Mental abnormality, facts and theories*. London: Hutchinson 1948.