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4. RHETORIC AND THE WORLD OF SCIENCE IN THE EModE PERIOD<br />

audience, but during the 17 th<br />

century many books were written for a lay audience<br />

(Bennett 1970: 142). There were also some writings based on lectures on anatomy and<br />

surgery given at the Barber-Surgeons’ Hall, which appeared in print just to be easy to<br />

carry to those places required by the surgeon. These lectures were part of the training<br />

programme (which also had practical lessons) of The Company of the Barber-Surgeons of<br />

London for lecturing surgeons-to-be (Robinson 1984: 1171). Healing herbs were a current<br />

topic in printed books at that time (Bennett 1970: 146). From the mid 16 th century<br />

onwards, medical pamphlets became also very common (cf. Ratia and Suhr 2011: 180-<br />

184). They were ephemeral, cheap and easy-to-print texts. They could deal with medical<br />

controversies, having a professional readership, or having an advertising function. In the<br />

latter case, they had the widest audience and were read aloud in public places as was the<br />

case with news pamphlets. It seems therefore that in EModE, there was a great variety of<br />

medical writings dealing with many different topics and intended for different kinds of<br />

audience. However, this study will focus just on academic treatises, surgical treatises and<br />

remedy books due to time and space reasons. The main features of these texts will be<br />

outlined in what follows.<br />

4.5.2.1. Academic treatises<br />

Academic treatises represent the most learned level of writing of the medical texts<br />

considered in this dissertation as they were generally intended to foster knowledge among<br />

professionals (Taavitsainen 2002: 202). They consisted of a range of learned texts dealing<br />

with bloodletting, ophthalmology, embryology, urinoscopy, gynaecology, the plague and<br />

other diseases, as well as encyclopaedic treatises rooted in the academic tradition (Pahta<br />

126

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