Tokens, Signs, and Symptoms: Signifier Terms in Medical Texts from 1375 to 1725

One of the fundamental tasks of practical medicine has always been to identify the signs of health and disease. In this paper, I contrast the Oxford English Dictionary (henceforth OED) entries of four of the most common medical signifier terms (token, sign, symptom, and accident) in English vernacular medical texts from the end of the 14th century to the beginning of the 18th with their occurrences both in the Corpus of Early English Medical Writing (CEEM) and early dictionaries published between 1530 and 1775. Focusing on the medical senses of signifier terms and their patterns of usage, I suggest revisions to the OED entries on the basis of new data and argue that more comprehensive information should be recorded on frequency of use.