Bodies Politic: Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain, 1650–1900Reaktion Books, Mar 8, 2021 - 328 pages In 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 11
... representations within media fusing the verbal and visual. It also became quite clear to me – as long before to other scholars – that the point of interrogating visual evidence must be to enrich our grasp of cultural representation, not ...
... representations within media fusing the verbal and visual. It also became quite clear to me – as long before to other scholars – that the point of interrogating visual evidence must be to enrich our grasp of cultural representation, not ...
Page 12
... representations are realities. I should also make it clear that this book has no pretensions to be a work of art history: I leave questions of the interpretation of images in terms of the practice of art itself to those more trained ...
... representations are realities. I should also make it clear that this book has no pretensions to be a work of art history: I leave questions of the interpretation of images in terms of the practice of art itself to those more trained ...
Page 31
... competing points of view (patient and doctor, male and female, elite and plebeian), and the polyvalency of representations. The satiric and ironic registers beloved of the Augustan temper ceaselessly destabilized signs,
... competing points of view (patient and doctor, male and female, elite and plebeian), and the polyvalency of representations. The satiric and ironic registers beloved of the Augustan temper ceaselessly destabilized signs,
Page 32
... representations of the body in suffering and sickness – and under the regime of medicine. Given that pain was regarded as, in large measure, unspeakable, how were diseases to be made visible? And did revealing them defuse their threat ...
... representations of the body in suffering and sickness – and under the regime of medicine. Given that pain was regarded as, in large measure, unspeakable, how were diseases to be made visible? And did revealing them defuse their threat ...
Page 33
... representations of sufferers itself therapeutic, or quite the reverse? Chapter addresses the wider circles of the medical profession and those beyond the fringe. At a time of change within the occupation, how far were traditional ...
... representations of sufferers itself therapeutic, or quite the reverse? Chapter addresses the wider circles of the medical profession and those beyond the fringe. At a time of change within the occupation, how far were traditional ...
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