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 16
... Royal College of Physicians . As ever shuffling appear- 4 William Hogarth , Marriage A - la - Mode , pl . III , 1745 , coloured aquatint . In the ' museum ' of the quack doctor Jean Misaubin ( see illus . 2 ) , Viscount Squanderfield ...
... Royal College of Physicians . As ever shuffling appear- 4 William Hogarth , Marriage A - la - Mode , pl . III , 1745 , coloured aquatint . In the ' museum ' of the quack doctor Jean Misaubin ( see illus . 2 ) , Viscount Squanderfield ...
Page 18
... Royal College of Physicians , in protest against the power monopoly enjoyed within that august institution by its Fellows , the inner elite ( illus . 36 ) . One scene in Foote's play features a knot of lawyers and practitioners poring ...
... Royal College of Physicians , in protest against the power monopoly enjoyed within that august institution by its Fellows , the inner elite ( illus . 36 ) . One scene in Foote's play features a knot of lawyers and practitioners poring ...
Page 22
... Royal College of Physicians , chartered in 1518. By curbing membership and policing metropolitan practice , the College's oligarchy , critics avowed , was blocking newer , better , or cheaper approaches to healing , including those ...
... Royal College of Physicians , chartered in 1518. By curbing membership and policing metropolitan practice , the College's oligarchy , critics avowed , was blocking newer , better , or cheaper approaches to healing , including those ...
Page 49
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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