“Strong churlish purging Pills”

Abstract

This article looks at the frequency and use of sequences of two or more attributive adjectives in early modern medical writing in English. Taking as a starting point the observation that long sequences of premodifiers are one of the many linguistic features that add complexity to present-day academic writing, I examine the situation diachronically and pragmatically during the period when the scholastic style of thought gave way to empiricism. The study will argue that while a modest increase in multi-adjectival premodifiers can be observed over the timeline, the observation can be largely attributed to pragmatic contexts which arose from the practice of early modern medicine and which, by and large, cannot be considered a predictor of present-day scientific style.

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“…Thus, accuracy in naming medical mixtures or identifying a medical disorder was not the only requirement. It was also necessary to convince potential lay readers that the described remedies were actually eff ective (Marttila 2011;Sylwanowicz 2013;Tyrkkö 2014;Wear 2000).…”

“…also Raumolin-Brunberg 1994). Other historical accounts of the use of adjectives as modifi ers concentrated on Middle English (Moskowich 2002;Moskowich and Crespo 2002;Sylwanowicz 2016), and Early and Late Modern English (Atkinson 1999;Tyrkkö 2014) scientifi c writings. According to these studies, the use of adjectives in noun phrases might have been conditioned, among other things, by extra-linguistic reasons, e.g.…”