MEDICAL TEXT AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT - RESEARCH ISSUES AND METHODS IN HISTORY AND TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION

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.