Bodies Politic: Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900Bodies Politic takes a critical look at representations of the body in death, disease, and health, as well as at images of the healing arts in Britain from the mid-seventeenth to the twentieth century. Arguing that great symbolic weight was attached to contrasting conceptions of the healthy and diseased body, Roy Porter shows 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 the changes in practitioners’ public identities over time. Packed with amusing anecdotes and unusual illustrations, this book is a magisterial account of the meanings of disease, doctoring, and the “body politic.” “A wonderful book. . . . There are 137 illustrations . . . and every one is an exultation in the fleshly horrors of the era.”—Guardian (UK) “Roy Porter is one of the world’s best historical writers: his prose is pithy, witty, vivid, engaging, and perfectly paced. He has a keen eye for evidence and can wrest conclusions with analytical rigour and imaginative subtlety. He masters fact and theory with equal ease and wields both lightly and powerfully.”—Independent |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 33
Page 9
... judgments have underwritten (or undermined) received truths and social hierarchies, not least the ascendancy of literate men (the 'phallic pen') over painted ladies. Even today, reading a book is widely held to be 'better' than ...
... judgments have underwritten (or undermined) received truths and social hierarchies, not least the ascendancy of literate men (the 'phallic pen') over painted ladies. Even today, reading a book is widely held to be 'better' than ...
Page 16
... social showiness. If the identification is right, Hogarth was having one of his sly digs at the pretensions of physicians. His premises certainly carry the whiff of a quack, but the grotesquely conceited Misaubin – in TomJones Henry ...
... social showiness. If the identification is right, Hogarth was having one of his sly digs at the pretensions of physicians. His premises certainly carry the whiff of a quack, but the grotesquely conceited Misaubin – in TomJones Henry ...
Page 24
... social fabric and the body politic. These affinities between physic and ritual performance, clinched by the twinning of Apollo as the god of the arts and of healing alike, were reinforced by the notion that participation in spectacles,
... social fabric and the body politic. These affinities between physic and ritual performance, clinched by the twinning of Apollo as the god of the arts and of healing alike, were reinforced by the notion that participation in spectacles,
Page 25
... social balm or caustic. As attested by such proverbial phrases as 'taking your medicine', it was 'a bitter pill' which purged, purified – or poisoned. And by projection and transference, bodies were also invested as incarnations of ...
... social balm or caustic. As attested by such proverbial phrases as 'taking your medicine', it was 'a bitter pill' which purged, purified – or poisoned. And by projection and transference, bodies were also invested as incarnations of ...
Page 29
... social targets, and political commentary fused with personal caricature. Early on, some three or four political prints appeared in the average week, but times of turmoil – Walpole's Excise Crisis, the Seven Years War, the Wilkite ...
... social targets, and political commentary fused with personal caricature. Early on, some three or four political prints appeared in the average week, but times of turmoil – Walpole's Excise Crisis, the Seven Years War, the Wilkite ...
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 Bath blood Britain British Cambridge captioning Caricature cartoon Chapter Christopher Lawrence College of Physicians coloured etching comic Cruikshank culture Death depicted disease dissection doctors Dorothy Porter E. P. Thompson Eighteenth Century English engraving Enlightenment Erasmus Darwin Essays etching with watercolour fashionable female Fiction flesh G. S. Rousseau George Cheyne George Cruikshank Georgian Gout Harmondsworth Haslam Haven healing History Hogarth to Rowlandson Hospital humour idem Ihid illus James Gillray John Bull Lady Letters London Lord Malady Mary Medicine mind moral Nature novel ofthe pain physic physician Pills political popular portrait practice practitioners profession professional Punch quack reads Renaissance representations Richard Robert Roy Porter Royal College Samuel Samuel Garth satire Science sexual Shandy sick Social Society Steven Shapin surgeon teeth theatre Thomas Beddoes Thomas Rowlandson Victorian vols London vols Oxford W. F. Bynum William Hunter women Woodward York