0 INTRODUCTION

4. RHETORIC AND THE WORLD OF SCIENCE IN THE EModE PERIOD
while explaining the process of experimentation, the author used the first person, as it was
a personal experience. However, in argumentation the author uses the first person plural
to include the readership and to try to obtain agreement.
4.2.2. The printing press
In this new network of scientists, the printing press played an important role, especially
for those writing in English (Eisenstein 1983: 185). Although the printing press had
already been introduced by Caxton in 1476 (Blake 2008 [1992]a: 7), it had an impact on
Early Modern scientific writing due to a combination of factors that are analyzed below.
However, it must be noted that the printing press was not very important for Latin-writing
scientists, who usually preferred their work to be contained in manuscripts instead of
books, since the number of readers able to understand them was very small.
In the particular case of medicine, Taavitsainen et al. (2011: 10) state that despite
the fact that the progress of medical printing was slower in England than in Continental
Europe, its influence on the circulation of medical ideas and information was profound.
This did not mean that printed books replaced “more primitive” methods of
communication. Rather, they were used in combination because some types of medical
texts better suited the handwritten production like, for instance, the compilations of
recipes from various sources, the notes taken by students on lectures or the aide-mémoire
of useful information and records of the treatment given to their patients compiled by
medical practitioners (Taavitsainen et al. 2011: 10). It was after 1550 when we witness a
remarkable increase in the number of medical books written in the vernacular.
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