Bodies Politic: Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900The 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. |
From inside the book
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... to illustrations of medical practice , exploring self - presentations by physicians , surgeons , and quacks and showing how practitioners ' pub- lic identities changed over time . Bodies Politic Disease , Death and Doctors in Britain ,
... to illustrations of medical practice , exploring self - presentations by physicians , surgeons , and quacks and showing how practitioners ' pub- lic identities changed over time . Bodies Politic Disease , Death and Doctors in Britain ,
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Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 Roy Porter. Contents I 2 3 Acknowledgements 8 Preface 9 Introductory : Framing the Picture 15 The Body Grotesque and Monstrous 35 The Body Healthy and Beautiful 63 4 Imagining Disease 89 ...
Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 Roy Porter. Contents I 2 3 Acknowledgements 8 Preface 9 Introductory : Framing the Picture 15 The Body Grotesque and Monstrous 35 The Body Healthy and Beautiful 63 4 Imagining Disease 89 ...
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Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 Roy Porter. reading a book is widely held to be ' better ' than watching television or ( telling phrase ) going to the pictures ; and academe still pooh - poohs vulgar ' coffee - table ...
Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 Roy Porter. reading a book is widely held to be ' better ' than watching television or ( telling phrase ) going to the pictures ; and academe still pooh - poohs vulgar ' coffee - table ...
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Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 Roy Porter. howing one way looking her fire to IT . Step's Wigh tanill Beast ) You impendent Whore wind stop going upright with the Cataplasm THE BATTLE OF THE CATAPLASM . in his hand I ...
Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 Roy Porter. howing one way looking her fire to IT . Step's Wigh tanill Beast ) You impendent Whore wind stop going upright with the Cataplasm THE BATTLE OF THE CATAPLASM . in his hand I ...
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Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 Roy Porter. 2 William Hogarth , A Harlot's Progress , pl . 5 , 1732 , engraving with etching . Next to the fire , and wrapped in ' sweating blankets ' , Moll Hackabout nears death as two ...
Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 Roy Porter. 2 William Hogarth , A Harlot's Progress , pl . 5 , 1732 , engraving with etching . Next to the fire , and wrapped in ' sweating blankets ' , Moll Hackabout nears death as two ...
Contents
Framing the Picture | 15 |
2 The Body Grotesque and Monstrous | 35 |
3 The Body Healthy and Beautiful | 63 |
4 Imagining Disease | 89 |
5 Prototypes of Practitioners | 129 |
6 Profiles of Patients | 150 |
7 Outsiders and Intruders | 171 |
8 Professional Problems | 209 |
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 beauty blood Britain British Cambridge captioning Caricature cartoon Chapter Christopher Lawrence College of Physicians coloured etching comic 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 head healing History of Medicine Hogarth to Rowlandson Hospital humour Ibid idem illus images James Gillray John Bull Lady Letters London Lord Malady Mary Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck mind moral nature novel pain patient physical physician Pills political popular 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 surgery teeth theatre Thomas Beddoes Thomas Rowlandson Victorian vols London vols Oxford William Hogarth William Hunter women York