1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910790018703321

Autore

Porter Roy <1946-2002.>

Titolo

Bodies politic [[electronic resource] ] : disease, death and doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 / / Roy Porter

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London, : Reaktion Books, 2001

ISBN

1-280-49368-2

9786613588913

1-86189-822-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (330 p.)

Collana

Picturing history

Disciplina

610/.941

Soggetti

Medicine - Great Britain - History

Physicians - Great Britain - History

Death - Great Britain - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Bodies Politic Cover; Imprint page; Contents; Acknowledgements; Preface; 1. Introductory: Framing the Picture; 2. The Body Grotesque and Monstrous; 3. The Body Healthy and Beautiful; 4.  Imagining Disease; Plate Section I; 5. Prototypes of Practitioners; 6. Profiles of Patients; 7. Outsiders and Intruders; Plate Section II; 8. Professional Problems; 9. The Medical Politician and the Body Politic; 10. Victorian Developments; Afterword; References; Select Bibliography; Photographic Acknowledgements; Index

Sommario/riassunto

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