Jj. Connor, MEDICAL TEXT AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT - RESEARCH ISSUES AND METHODS IN HISTORY AND TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION, Journal of technical writing and communication, 23(3), 1993, pp. 211-232
Identifying problems in recent technical communication studies of hist
orical medical text, this article suggests ways for researchers to ove
rcome them. Its approach uses five steps for conducting sound historic
al research: establishing originality for historical textual analysis;
adopting an authoritative text for analysis; understanding the genre
or form of a historical text; understanding the intellectual or social
context for a historical text; and understanding the publishing and r
eadership context of a historical text. These steps are discussed with
in the context of related fields of inquiry, namely history of medicin
e, history of the book, literary criticism and historical linguistics,
and analytical bibliography. The article concludes by exploring new d
irections for research in technical communication and history of medic
ine.