Medicine, madness, and social history : essays in honour of Roy Porter

Written in honour of eminent historian Roy Porter by twenty of his colleagues and students, the collection renders cutting edge scholarship accessible. Historians from the three fields that Porter made his own - the histories of medicine, madness, and the Enlightenment - illustrate his influence while tackling major themes ranging from disability rights to the popularization of science. In their accounts, artisan gardeners jostle with anarchists, dentists, and hypnotists in a lively, and very Porterian, parade. Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction: ‘De Omni Scribili’....Pages 1-13 Roy Porter and the Persons of History....Pages 14-21 Front Matter....Pages 23-23 Porter versus Foucault on the ‘Birth of the Clinic’....Pages 25-35 The ‘New History’ of the Enlightenment: An Essay in the Social History of Social History....Pages 36-45 The Politics of Particularism: Medicalization and Medical Reform in Nineteenth-century Britain....Pages 46-57 Charles Babbage and George Birkbeck: Science, Reform and Radicalism....Pages 58-69 Front Matter....Pages 71-71 French Dentists and English Teeth in the Long Eighteenth Century: A Tale of Two Cities and One Dentist....Pages 73-89 Hotbeds and Cool Fruits: The Unnatural Cultivation of the Eighteenth-century Cucumber....Pages 90-104 Arguing Disability: Ex-Servicemen’s Own Stories in Early Modern England, 1590–1790....Pages 105-117 Lunacy and Labouring Men: Narratives of Male Vulnerability in Mid-Victorian London....Pages 118-128 ‘Arrows of Desire’: British Sexual Utopians and the Politics of Health....Pages 129-138 ‘Twenty Centuries of Christianity Weigh Heavily on Women’s Brains ...’: Anarchism, Science and Women’s Nature in Spain at the Turn of the Twentieth Century....Pages 139-147 ‘A Band of Lunatics down Camberwell Way’: Percy Lane Oliver and Voluntary Blood Donation in Interwar Britain....Pages 148-158 Front Matter....Pages 159-159 Murder, Melancholy and the Insanity Defence in Eighteenth-century Hamburg....Pages 161-172 ‘One of the Best-Known Identity Crises in History’? John Stuart Mill’s Mental Crisis and its Meanings....Pages 173-181 Murder by Hypnosis? Altered States and the Mental Geography of Science....Pages 182-196 Maladies of the Will: Freedom, Fetters and the Fear of Freud....Pages 197-209 Two Cultures Revisited: The Case of the Fin de Siècle ....Pages 210-223 Roy....Pages 225-227 Back Matter....Pages 228-295 Roy Porter was a brilliant historian of medicine and madness. He was the British authority on the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, but he wore his learning lightly. He died, far too young, in 2002. This collection of essays was written by twenty of his colleagues and students, not just to honour his memory but to convey and extend the spirit of his work. All the essays are based on orginal work in the fields that Porter made his own. They range from the eighteenth century to the present, and tackle major themes, from disability rights to the popularization of science. However, the focus, for the most part, is on people - artisan gardeners jostle with anarchists, dentists and hypnotists in a lively, and very Porterian, parade. Medicine may sometimes seem techinical and remote, but this collection brings it to life through its social history