The scientific and pseudo-scientific lore in Milton's prose, like that in his poetry, is impressive for its bulk and its conventionality. What may at first seem recondite information is anticipated repeatedly in such vernacular encyclopedias and common handbooks as Bartholomew's De Proprietatibus Rerum (c. 1230), Stephen Batman's Batman vppon Bartholome (1582), Peter de la Primaudaye's The French Academie (1618), and John Swan's Speculum Mundi (1643). The range is tremendous: astronomy, astrology, herbal, animal, and lapidary lore, physiology, medical lore—all are drawn upon in their customary associations for illustration, argument, invective, and the other devices of controversial prose. Medical and anatomical allusions recur with great frequency. Anyone writing about the ills of the body politic, as Milton did, will make the expected comparisons with human disease; but the emphasis in Of Reformation and Eikonoklastes on fevers, flesh and skin diseases, insanity, and other ailments goes beyond the casual to the insistent and the directive. In Eikonoklastes and the Defences, for example, the stress falls upon disease and distortion rather than remedy : distemper, palsy, abortion, false pregnancy, and miscarriage. In these Milton is arguing more against an opponent than for an idea, and the morbid associations are part of his strategy.