Bodies Politic : Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900

by Roy Porter

The renowned historian Roy Porter here takes us on an entertaining trip through more than two hundred years of visual and verbal accounts of the body and medicine. Focusing his attention for the first time on visual imagery, Porter examines the ways in which the sick and their healers were represented to the culture at large from the mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth century. The author combines erudition, a sharp sense of humor, and abundant art to show how contrasting conceptions of the healthy and diseased body were mapped onto antithetical notions of the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. He juxtaposes images of disease to illustrations of medical practice, exploring self-presentations by physicians, surgeons, and quacks and showing how practitioners' public identities changed over time. Bodies Politic argues that the human body is the chief signifier and communicator of all manner of meanings—religious, moral, political, and medical alike—and that pre-scientific medicine was an art that depended heavily on performance, ritual, rhetoric, and theater. Throughout, Porter makes clear the wide metaphorical and symbolic implications of disease and doctoring.

Genres: History Of Science, History, Science, Nonfiction

328 pages, Hardcover

First published July 5, 2001

About the author

Roy's books cover several fields: the history of geology, London, 18th-Century British ideas and society, medicine, madness, quackery, patients and practitioners, literature and art, on which subjects (and others) he published over 200 books are articles.

List of works can be found @ wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Porter )

Reviews

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will probably be slated for saying this, but Roy Porter really is the best writer of the History of Medicine. He is witty and has a way of sharing information in such a variety of ways to people of all different levels. The difference in writing style between his academic essays and popular history books is subtle but effective. Books like this are as easy to soak up in bed as a novel and far more fulfilling. Although his subject matter is almost always fairy morbid and gruesome he does not revel in it. He has an ability - or raw talent - for showing you exactly what it would be like (and how it would feel) to suffer from or treat illnesses from the past in a sympathetic but un-nauseated way. Yes, I am a huge fan of his and everything that he writes.

[Susie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*