Bodies Politic: Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 (Picturing History) - Softcover

Porter, Roy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1861891652 ISBN 13: 9781861891655

Publisher: Reaktion Books, 2014

Synopsis

Bodies 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

About this title

Review

The role of doctors and their interactions with patients have changed a great deal over the centuries. Noted historian Roy Porter uses visual and literary images of medical practitioners and the sick to examine these shifting relationships in Bodies Politic: Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900.

The period after the Restoration saw an explosion of visual representations of medical subjects. Shrewdly noting that these images both reflected and shaped cultural perceptions, Porter analyzes them for clues about health and sickness, doctors, quacks, and patients, and the relationships between them all.

Perhaps the most interesting chapter in Bodies Politic revolves around the transfer of idioms of sickness and healing to the realm of politics. The use of medical imagery as a tool for satire dates at least to ancient Greece, but as Porter (and several of the book's 137 illustrations) reveals, it became an art form in the 18th century. Twenty-first century political cartoonists have nothing on Cruikshank, Gillray, and Rowlandson.

Though this is a dense book, Porter writes with his usual wit and erudition throughout Bodies Politic. A welcome addition to the scholarly literature on medical, political, and art history. --Sunny Delaney

About the Author

Roy Porter (1946–2002) was professor in the social history of medicine at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London, UK. He is the author of Religion, Health and Suffering and Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World.

Edition details

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1861891652
• ISBN 13: 9781861891655
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 328