Having so far addressed how companies aimed to appeal to the medical profession by designing, producing and distributing catalogues in ways which suited its sensibilities, we now turn in this final chapter to the varied ways in which practitioners read, used and experienced the publication. While medical trade companies, such as Arnold & Sons, often claimed that sustained reproduction and distribution of new catalogue editions was in itself proof that their publications were well received among the professional practitioner readership, responses from doctors themselves are not to be neglected. Indeed, as historians of the book have noted for other types of audiences, readers and their responses form a vital part of Darnton's, ‘communications circuit’, not least because a reader's, experiences and desires influence the author both before and after the act of composition.

Darnton's, ‘communication circuit’, then, allows us to assess the success of a publication through its alignment of authorial intentions and reader responses. Medical companies clearly encouraged doctors to order products from the catalogue and to use the publication as reference material.