‘For the Benefit of those who Understand not the Latine Tongue’. The vernacularization of medicine in late-seventeenth-century England

The 1650s, opened by the publication of Nicholas Culpeper’s unlicensed translation of the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis (1649), have been described as a key moment for the vernacular medical publishing market, with a decisive increase in the number of medical books printed in English. This paper aims at providing a survey of the state-of-the-art of medical popularization in the second half of the seventeenth century, by looking exclusively at English translations of learned Latin texts. As rendering a text in the vernacular means making it virtually accessible to all who could read, translations represent a first step towards what has been defined as the democratization of learned medical knowledge. Following a critical discourse analytic and historical pragmatic approach, this study offers an overview of the context of production of these learned translations, with a particular focus on the authors, their target readers and declarations of intents. Some reflections on the texts as specific genres are also offered. Finally, as four of the texts contain glossaries of hard words and technical terms, intended as further strategies to render specialized medical knowledge accessible to a wider reading public, the paper presents a close lexicographic description of these resources. The analysis shows that these translations, mostly compiled by a group of medical professionals in conflict with the established authority of the Royal College of Physicians and their principles, contributed in all effects to the democratization process, as they mainly targeted lay people with the aim of spreading knowledge to the less privileged.