Bodies Politic by Roy Porter, Reaktion Books, ÂŁ25, ISBN 186189094X
A FEAST for mind and eye is laid before you in Roy Porter’s Bodies Politic.
Here are galleries of cartoons—Rowlandsons, Gillrays and
Cruikshanks—all satirising doctors and their methods. Practitioners and
patients are hideous in appearance and so are the remedies depicted. Quacks
abound. Huge wordy balloons are tethered to mouths. Public opinion of
18th-century doctors and surgeons shows in names such as Sir Valiant Venery and
Dr Peter Putrid.
But the 19th century saw the shift from the barber’s shop to Harley Street,
pinstriped trousers and gravitas. Scientific…
