The Circulation of the Blood "in a New Method Plain and Easy to All Capacities". Popularization Strategies in Henry Nicholson's A Brief Treatise of the Anatomy of Humane Bodies

As it marked the birth of modern circulatory physiology, William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis (1628), the experimental essay which presented his theory of the circulation of the blood, is regarded as «the most important medical work ever written» (GUTHRIE 1958: 1571). While an anonymous English edition of Harvey’s work appeared in 1653, the first text that was explicitly and overtly intended as a popularization of this monumental discovery probably was Henry Nicholson’s A Brief Treatise of the Anatomy of Humane Bodies (1709). Since the text is described on its titlepage as plain, easy and suited to all capacities, the present paper, following historical sociopragmatic methods (CULPEPER 2009), aims to analyze the popularization strategies (CALSAMIGLIA 2003, GOTTI 2003 and GARZONE 2006) adopted by Nicholson to accommodate the specialized notion of the circulation of the blood to a non-specialized readership, and ultimately to understand how such a significant physiological, anatomical and medical innovation was rendered accessible to a wider audience.