Bodies Politic: Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain, 1650–1900In this historical tour de force, Roy Porter takes a critical look at representations of the body in health, disease, and death in Britain from the mid-seventeenth to the twentieth century. Porter argues that great symbolic weight was attached to contrasting conceptions of the healthy and diseased body and that such ideas were mapped onto antithetical notions of the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. With these images in mind, he explores aspects of being ill alongside the practice of medicine, paying special attention to self-presentations by physicians, surgeons, and quacks, and to changes in practitioners’ public identities over time. Porter also examines the wider symbolic meanings of disease and doctoring and the “body politic.” Porter’s book is packed with outrageous and amusing anecdotes portraying diseased bodies and medical practitioners alike. |
From inside the book
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Page 10
... eighteenth century brought a great surge in the making of images of all sorts , be they illustrations of novels or chapbooks , topographical engravings , sporting prints , technical drawings , satirical squibs , anatomical atlases ...
... eighteenth century brought a great surge in the making of images of all sorts , be they illustrations of novels or chapbooks , topographical engravings , sporting prints , technical drawings , satirical squibs , anatomical atlases ...
Page 15
... eighteenth- century artists for mining their compositions with textual codes and hints.1 Take the fifth plate of William Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress series , which features two arrogant physicians , resplendent in their wigs , buckled ...
... eighteenth- century artists for mining their compositions with textual codes and hints.1 Take the fifth plate of William Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress series , which features two arrogant physicians , resplendent in their wigs , buckled ...
Page 22
... eighteenth century ; most practitioners had gained their skills by apprenticeship and conse- quently lacked formal anatomical or scientific training.23 Above all , critics denied that doctors did much good . The compla- cent physician ...
... eighteenth century ; most practitioners had gained their skills by apprenticeship and conse- quently lacked formal anatomical or scientific training.23 Above all , critics denied that doctors did much good . The compla- cent physician ...
Page 25
... eighteenth century had studied medicine - some even practised it ; John Locke , John Arbuthnot , Richard Blackmore , Bernard de Mandeville , Samuel Garth , Mark Akenside , Oliver Goldsmith , George Crabbe and Erasmus Darwin , to name ...
... eighteenth century had studied medicine - some even practised it ; John Locke , John Arbuthnot , Richard Blackmore , Bernard de Mandeville , Samuel Garth , Mark Akenside , Oliver Goldsmith , George Crabbe and Erasmus Darwin , to name ...
Page 29
... eighteenth century brought the rise of the political cartoon . Though distortion had been used for comic ends since time immemorial , its application to recognizable individuals did not become common till the Renaissance , and the work ...
... eighteenth century brought the rise of the political cartoon . Though distortion had been used for comic ends since time immemorial , its application to recognizable individuals did not become common till the Renaissance , and the work ...
Contents
8 | |
9 | |
15 | |
35 | |
3 The Body Healthy and Beautiful | 63 |
4 Imagining Disease | 89 |
Plate Section I | 97 |
5 Prototypes of Practitioners | 129 |
Plate Secton II | 177 |
8 Professional Problems | 209 |
9 The Medical Politician and the Body Politic | 229 |
10 VictorianDevelopments | 250 |
Afterword | 272 |
References | 276 |
Select Bibliography | 315 |
Photographic Acknowledgements | 318 |
Other editions - View all
Bodies Politic: Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 Roy Porter No preview available - 2001 |
Bodies Politic: Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 Roy Porter No preview available - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
anatomy apothecary artists Bath blood Britain British Cambridge captioning Caricature cartoon Chapter Christopher Lawrence College of Physicians coloured etching Cruikshank culture Death depicted disease dissection doctors Early Modern Eighteenth Century England English engraving Enlightenment Erasmus Darwin Essays etching with watercolour fashionable female flesh G. S. Rousseau George Cheyne George Cruikshank Georgian Gout Harmondsworth Haslam healing History of Medicine Hogarth to Rowlandson Hospital humour Ibid idem illus James Gillray John Bull Lady Letters London Lord Malady Mary Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck mind moral Morison Nature novel pain patient physical physician Pills political portrait practice practitioners profession professional Punch quack reads representations Richard Robert Roy Porter Royal College Samuel Samuel Garth satire Science sexual Shandy sick Social Society SQUIB Steven Shapin surgeon teeth theatre Thomas Beddoes Thomas Rowlandson Tristram Victorian vols London vols Oxford W. F. Bynum William Hogarth William Hunter women York