James Dougal Fleming is Professor of English Literature at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His research is primarily in early modern intellectual history, with an emphasis on epistemic issues surrounding, and arising from, the Scientific Revolution. His previous books are Milton’s Secrecy and Philosophical Hermeneutics (2008), The Mirror of Information in Early Modern England: John Wilkins and the Universal Character (2017), and (ed. and intro.) The Invention of Discovery, 1500–1700 (2011).

• IntroductionThe Double physicianInformatio mediciMessages and meaningsFrom hand to soulPart One: Technology1. The Seventeenth-Century Shorthand Movement: In Four CornersA Protean artYet shorterGroovy imagesAnother way to the word2. “My Invention”: What Was Characterie?Verbatim notationInformational exchangeHybrid publishingInnovationSource3. “Indifferently Affected”: The Characterie TermsWanting an alphabetDe arte combinatoriaA Book of listsWriting sermonsOrality and controlMere informationPart Two: Theory4. Against Navigation: English MedicinesThe Medical background, ca. 1580An English Galenism, 1574The Paracelsian difference, 1585TEM (i) Aut externi orbis(ii) Here be (no) serpents5. “Never Able to Abide”: The Melancholy ConscienceThe Medical Tradition: Natural, genial, adustThe Literary Valence: Euphues his faceTreatment: Going on a dataTMel (i) “Saving that”(ii) “No medicine, no purgation, no cordial”(iii) “Spectacles are to be shunned”(iv) “In written words revealed”6. “The Mechenist”: Not Being ThereTMel (v) The Natural chemist(vi) Invisible seeds(vii) Bright’s spirit(viii) Faculty and instruments(ix) In machina(x) Serenity of the spotless psyche(xi) Information overloadConclusionAppendices1. Sixteenth-Century English shorthands before Bright’s? The absence of evidence.2. Lists of the Characterie terms.3. Bright on “soul” and “mind.”Bibliography