From leech to doctor: The Lexical and Semantic Evolution of Terms for ‘physician’ in Non-Medical Prose Texts

Abstract

The study examines fi ve names of medieval medical practitioners: barber, doctor, leech, physician, and surgeon. The aim is to view the semantic change of those names in nonmedical prose texts from the Middle English period. The analysis also considers their origin, frequency, semantic fi elds, function and both metaphorical and non-metaphorical meanings in Middle English and later. Furthermore, the research verifi es to what extent the fi ndings of Sylwanowicz (2003) are confi rmed by the results of a similar examination of a non-medical corpus. The data for the study come from the Innsbruck Corpus of Middle English Prose, with the support of historical dictionaries.