Author: PORTER, ROY (1946-2002)
Title: Bodies politic : disease, death and doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 / Roy Porter.
Description: London : Reaktion 2001. First Edition. Near fine copy in the original gilt-blocked cloth. Slightest suggestion only of dust-dulling to the spine bands and panel edges. Remains particularly well-preserved overall; tight. bright. clean and strong. Provenance: From the library of Eric George Hatfield Moody with his personalized bookplate to front pastedown.; 8vo 8' - 9' tall; 328 pages; Physical description. : 328 p. : ill. (some col. ). facsims. (some col. ). ports. Subject: Physicians - Great Britain - History - Pictorial works. Medicine - Great Britain - History - Pictorial works. Death - Great Britain - History - Pictorial works. Medicine - Great Britain - Pictorial works - History. Medical personnel - Great Britain - Pictorial works - History. Summary: In a historical tour de force. Roy Porter takes a critical look at representations of the body in death. disease and health. and at images of the healing arts in Britain from the mid-seventeenth to the twentieth century. Porter's key assumptions are that the human body is the chief signifier and communicator of all manner of meanings religious. moral. political and medical and that pre-scientific medicine was an art which depended heavily on ritual. rhetoric and theatre. 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.ISBN: 186189094x. Weight in Kg appr.:

Keywords: 186189094x