Obraz zarazy w świetle traktatu medycznego Piotra Umiastowskiego pt. Nauka o morowym powietrzu na czwory księgi przełożona (1591)

This article aims to show the picture of the plague as created by Piotr Umiastowski in his medical treatise entitled Nauka o morowym powietrzu na czwory księgi przełożona from 1591. It discusses the synonymy connected with the names of illnesses, the features of the plague and its symptoms, the origins of the epidemic, as well as the ways illness can be perceived in metaphorical terms. The analyses are intended to show the past methods of conceptualising an illness, which was, on the one hand, determined by the medical science of sixteenth century, and, on the other, by the idea of illness as preserved in colloquial language. The research also points to chosen linguistic devices which form the image of an illness, in particular the evaluative lexicon and given stylistic devices that perform the artistic functions of language (comparison, metaphor, epithets).