Chapter published in:
Late Modern English Medical Texts: Writing medicine in the eighteenth century. Including the LMEMT Corpus
Edited by Irma Taavitsainen and Turo Hiltunen
[Not in series 221] 2019
► pp. 31–74

Chapter 3
Topics of eighteenth-century medical writing with triangulation of methods

LMEMT and the underlying reality

| University of Helsinki
| University of Zurich
| University of Cambridge
This chapter deals with the most important developments within society and the medical discourse community in the eighteenth-century Britain. It applies several methods by way of triangulation to probe into relevant aspects of the history of medicine and medical writing between 1700 and 1800. The first part provides a comprehensive overview, mostly based on the previous literature, giving pertinent background information to the corpus and its text selection. The second part contains the first large-scale mapping of medical writing in the late modern period as an interdisciplinary enterprise between computer science, medical history, and linguistics with a Digital Humanities application. The results of empirical bottom-up quantitative assessments with Topic Modeling and Kernel Density Estimation applications reveal what changes and what remains constant in this period. The programs also indicate which texts were important as forerunners of innovative ideas and which adhered to the old patterns of thought. The third part quotes pertinent text extracts for illustration and applies discourse analytical methods for a qualitative assessment. These passages show how the developments towards more modern approaches progressed and how linguistic practices reflect increasing professionalization in the field.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background and what the earlier literature tells us about eighteenth-century medicine
    • 2.1From medieval to early modern
    • 2.2To the eighteenth century
    • 2.3Society-based changes in the eighteenth century
    • 2.4Aftermaths of the old ways of thinking
  • 3.From words to topics with Topic Modeling
    • 3.1Detecting similar and period-specific words with Kernel Density Estimates
    • 3.2The method of Topic Modeling
    • 3.3Topics in the two medical corpora 1500–1800
      • 3.3.1Topics in EMEMT
      • 3.3.2Topics in LMEMT
    • 3.4Contributions of EMEMT and LMEMT to common topics
    • 3.5Assessment by categories
      • 3.5.1 general treatises
      • 3.5.2 specific treatises
      • 3.5.3Medical recipe collections
      • 3.5.4 regimens
      • 3.5.5 surgical and anatomical texts
      • 3.5.6 public health
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1What we set out to do in this chapter
    • 4.2The approaches, our findings, and the underlying reality
    • 4.3Paradigm changes and emerging thought styles in LMEMT
    • 4.4Thought styles of diminishing importance in LMEMT
  • 5.Conclusions
Published online: 04 December 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.221.03taa