This publication fills a longexisting gap in English historical linguistics by offering a comprehensive account of the semantic development of Old and Middle English synonyms of the term sickness, and an examination of possible conditioning factors leading to the loss of Anglo-Saxon lexical items,presented
within the context of previous research on the semantic change in general, and
theoretical and practical discussion of English medieval medicine, in particular.

Analyzing the origin and meaning of the terms within the overall structure of the
lexical field, the author also considers different chronological layers of the
sickness-nouns and the explicatory techniques used by the scribe when presenting
those terms to their reader. The book will be of interest to lexicologists, scholars interested in historical language for specialized purposes, as well as
historians of medicine.