… social) to practical messages (street names, road- or shop signs) – and for various purposes (didactic manuals, self-improvement books, chapbooks), including religious or spiritual goals (with the rise of literacy from the seventeenth … 1738 and that of the Royal College of Physicians in 1749. Thus, scientists and a larger audience became informed of the improvements of science through collective, public readings. 11 . See Betty A. Schellenberg, Simon Fraser, Literary …