0 INTRODUCTION

4. RHETORIC AND THE WORLD OF SCIENCE IN THE EModE PERIOD
By the beginning of the 17 th century, there was a great demand for books on
medical issues, and as a result, a debate concerning the suitability of using the vernacular
in this kind of writing. As mentioned in Section 4.3.2.3, there were two main reasons for
the opposition to medical writing in the vernacular. On the one hand, it might have
brought discredit on this genre, and on the other, all the knowledge of this science would
be disclosed to the general public. Sometimes writers using the vernacular were also
criticized for endangering the health of ordinary people, who might attempt to be their
own physicians. However, writers using the vernacular said that if laymen faced some
difficulty in understanding the instructions given, they could always ask the physician for
advice, and backed themselves on the fact that ancient authorities such as Latin, Greek
and Arabian physicists wrote in their mother tongue (Bennett 1970: 140, 142).
There were also cases when illiterate people could have access to medical writing.
Some kinds of medical texts such as proclamations, plague orders or bills of mortality
were written to be read aloud in front of an audience, usually in public places. In this way,
a person who could read acted as a transmissor of the information contained in the
writings to the others (P. M. Jones 2011: 33).
4.5.2. Medical writings
As Taavitsainen et al. (2011: 9) point out, English medical texts in the EModE period
were a large heterogeneous group of writings. There was a wide range of medical topics,
and their authors were also quite heterogeneous since they belonged to different
educational and professional backgrounds. Furthermore, medical texts could be found in
print or in manuscripts. At the time, there were writings whose target was a professional
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