ABSTRACT
This chapter considers what is at stake in early modern collision of numbers and words by examining John Graunt's Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality. In order to understand Graunt's complex use of the searchers' evidence, people need to appreciate how these women are deeply connected to the 'medical marketplace' in early modern culture, and that their position derives from expertise rather than ignorance in matters of the body. Careful attention to the relationship between the searchers and the bills of mortality illuminates an overlooked junction between medical semiotics, with its roots in antiquity, and the burgeoning epistemologies of the 'new' science. While Graunt certainly appreciated the complexities inherent in his reliance on the searchers' observations for his own scientific endeavors, later scholars have had little interest in investigating the relationship between the searchers and the bills of mortality.
