Porter, Roy S. 1946-2002

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PORTER, Roy S. 1946-2002

(Roy Sydney Porter)

PERSONAL: Born in December 31, 1946, in Hitchin, England; died of heart failure, March 3, 2002, St. Leonards-on-the-Sea, East Sussex, England; son of a jeweler; married; wife's name Dorothy (an author and academician). Education: Attended Christ College, Cambridge, B.A., 1968, Ph.D., 1974.

CAREER: Churchill College, Cambridge, England, research fellow, 1970–72, director of studies in history, 1972–77, dean, 1977–79; Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London, England, senior lecturer, 1979–91, reader, 1991–93, professor of the social history of medicine, 1993–2001.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fellow, British Academy, 1994; Los Angeles Times Book Award for History, 1998, for London: A Social History; Wolfson Prize, 2000, for Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World; honorary fellow, Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of Psychiatrists.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

The Making of Geology: Earth Science in Britain, 1660–1815, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1977.

English Society in the Eighteenth Century, Allen Lane (London, England), 1982, Penguin (New York, NY), 1990.

The Earth Sciences: An Annotated Bibliography, Garland (New York, NY), 1983.

Mind-Forg'd Manacles: A History of Madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1987.

A Social History of Madness: Stories of the Insane, Weidenfeld and Nicolson (London, England), 1987, published in the United States as A Social History of Madness: The World through the Eyes of the Insane, 1988.

Gibbon: Making History, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1988.

(With wife, Dorothy Porter) Patient's Progress: Doctors and Doctoring in Eighteenth-Century England, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1989.

Health for Sale: Quackery in England, 1660–1850, Manchester University Press (Manchester, England), 1989.

(With Dorothy Porter) In Sickness and in Health: The British Experience, 1650–1850, Basil Blackwell (New York, NY), 1989.

Doctor of Society: Thomas Beddoes and the Sick Trade in Late-Enlightenment England, Routledge (London, England), 1991, Routledge (New York, NY), 1992.

London: A Social History, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1994, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1995.

(With Lesley Hall) The Facts of Life: The Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650–1950, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1995.

(Coauthor) The History of Bethlem, Routledge (London, England), 1997.

The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity, HarperCollins (London, England), 1997, Norton (New York, NY), 1998.

The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment, published as Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World, Penguin Press (New York, NY), 2000, second edition published as The Enlightenment, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Bodies Politic: Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650–1900, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 2001.

Madness: A Brief History, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine, Norton (New York, NY), 2003.

Flesh in the Age of Reason, foreword by Simon Schama, Allen Lane (London, England), 2003, Norton (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to books, including London 1753, by Sheila O'Connell, British Museum Press (London, England), 2003. Contributor to periodicals, including History Today.

EDITOR

(With L.J. Jordanova) Images of the Earth: Essays in the History of Environmental Sciences, British Society for the History of Science (Chalfont St. Giles, England), 1979.

(With G.S. Rousseau) The Ferment of Knowledge: Studies in the Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Science, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1980.

William Hobbs, The Earth Generated and Anatomized: An Early Eighteenth-Century Theory of the Earth, British Museum (London, England), 1981.

(With Mikulas Teich) The Enlightenment in National Context, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1981.

(With W.F. Bynum and E.J. Browne) Dictionary of the History of Science, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1981.

(With W.F. Bynum) William Hunter and the Eighteenth-Century Medical World, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1985.

Dizionario biografico della storia della medicina e delle scienze naturali, F.M. Ricci (Milan, Italy), 1985–1988.

(With W.F. Bynum and Michael Shepherd) The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry, three volumes, Tavistock Publications (New York, NY), 1985.

(With Mikulas Teich) Revolution in History, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1986.

(With Sylvana Tomaselli) Rape, Basil Blackwell (New York, NY), 1986.

(With Andrew Wear) Problems and Methods in the History of Medicine, Croom (New York, NY), 1987.

(With W.F. Bynum) Medical Fringe and Medical Orthodoxy, 1750–1850, Croom Helm (Wolfeboro, NH), 1987.

Disease, Medicine, and Society in England, 1550–1860, Macmillan Education (Hampshire, England), 1987.

(With Peter Burke) The Social History of Language, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1987.

(With G.S. Rousseau) Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment, Manchester University Press (Manchester, England), 1987, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1988.

John Haslam, Illustrations of Madness, Routledge (New York, NY), 1988.

(With Mikulas Teich) Romanticism in National Context, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1988.

Thomas Trotter, An Essay, Medical, Philosophical, and Chemical, on Drunkenness and Its Effects on the Human Body, Routledge (New York, NY), 1988.

Man Masters Nature: Twenty-Five Centuries of Science, Braziller (New York, NY), 1988.

(With W.F. Bynum) Brunonianism in Britain and Europe, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine (London, England), 1988.

(With Sylvana Tomaselli) The Dialectics of Friendship, Routledge (New York, NY), 1989.

(With G.S. Rousseau) Exoticism in the Enlightenment, Manchester University Press (Manchester, England), 1989.

(With Lindsay Granshaw) The Hospital in History, Routledge (New York, NY), 1989.

(With Mikulas Teich) Fin de Siecle and Its Legacy, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

George Cheyne: The English Malady (1733), Routledge (New York, NY), 1991.

The Faber Book of Madness, Faber (London, England), 1991.

(With Peter Burke) Language, Self, and Society: A Social History of Language, Polity Press (Cambridge, MA), 1991.

(With Mikulas Teich) The Scientific Revolution in National Context, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

(With Mikulas Teich) The Renaissance in National Context, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

Myths of the English, Basil Blackwell (Cambridge, MA), 1992.

The Popularization of Medicine, 1650–1850, Routledge (New York, NY), 1992.

(With Mark S. Micale) Discovering the History of Psychiatry, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1994.

(With Mikulas Teich) Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science: The History of Attitudes to Sexuality, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1994.

(With Mikulas Teich and Bob Scribner) The Reformation in National Context, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1994.

(With Jeremy Black) A Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century World History, Basil Blackwell (Cambridge, MA), 1994.

(With Colin Jones) Reassessing Foucault: Power, Medicine, and the Body, Routledge (New York, NY), 1994.

(With Peter Burke) Languages and Jargons: Contributions to a Social History of Language, Polity Press, 1995.

(With Christopher Fox and Robert Wokler) Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth-Century Domains, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1995.

Disease, Medicine, and Society in England, 1550–1860, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

(With German E. Berrios) A History of Clinical Psychiatry: The Origin and History of Psychiatric Disorders, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Mikulas Teich) Drugs and Narcotics in History, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Marie Mulvey Roberts) Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

(With Mikulas Teich) The Industrial Revolution in National Context: Europe and the U.S.A., Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

(With Mikulas Teich and Bo Gustafsson) Nature and Society in Historical Context, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, Routledge (New York, NY), 1997.

(With G.S. Rousseau) Gout, The Patrician Malady, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1998.

(With John R. Hinnells) Religion, Health, and Suffering: A Cross-Cultural Study of Attitudes to Suffering and the Implications for Medicine in a Multi-Religious Society, Kegan Paul International (New York, NY), 1999.

(With German E. Berrios) A History of Clinical Psychiatry: The Origin and History of Psychiatric Disorders, Athlone Press (Somerset, NJ), 1999.

(With Ole Peter Grell) Toleration in Enlightenment Europe, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2001.

(With David Wright) The Confinement of the Insane: International Perspectives, 1800–1965, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2003.

The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 4: Eighteenth-Century Science, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2003.

(With Helen Nicholson and Bridget Bennett) Women, Madness, and Spiritualism, Routledge (New York, NY), 2003.

(With W.F. Bynum) Medicine and the Five Senses, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

(With W.F. Bynum) The Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Also editor of Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Society, 1985, The National Question in Europe in Historical Context, 1993, and consulting editor, with Marilyn Ogilvie, to The Biographical Dictionary of Scientists, third edition, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2000. Also author of Quacks: Fakers and Charlatans in English Medicine.

ADAPTATIONS: Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World was adapted as a British Broadcasting Corp. television program, 2000.

SIDELIGHTS: The late British academician and author Roy S. Porter taught the social history of medicine at London's Wellcome Institute until his 2001 retirement. He specialized in the history of medical matters during the eighteenth century, and penned and edited numerous books on the subject. Porter's first book-length works, however, concerned the earth sciences rather than medical matters. The Making of Geology: Earth Science in Britain, 1660–1815 for one, was published in 1977. "As the title indicates, Porter's study confines itself to the British," noted Kenneth Taylor in Science, "but this limitation helps make possible what is perhaps the most interesting and valuable feature of the book, its consistent focus on the social as well as the intellectual currents out of which geology materialized." The critic went on to predict that The Making of Geology "will be studied profitably by all interested in the history of geology, and it should also bring the field a wider audience."

Porter was also, however, responsible for books dealing with the eighteenth century in more general ways, and for books extending their examinations to other periods of time. The phenomenon of the Enlightenment—the widespread embracing of principles of reason over superstition that took place in Europe and North America during the eighteenth century—is examined in articles by various contributing scholars, each writing about the different faces the movement wore in different nations. Countries discussed include England, Italy, Sweden, Russia, France, the Netherlands, and the then-newly formed United States. Charles Vereker affirmed in British Book News that The Enlightenment in National Context "will interest a wide variety of scholars, from theologians to sociologists." Porter and Teich went on to produce similar titles, including 1988's Romanticism in National Context, 1992's The Scientific Revolution in National Context and The Renaissance in National Context, and 1993's The National Question in Europe in Historical Context.

Following The Enlightenment in National Context, Porter's English Society in the Eighteenth Century saw print in his native England in 1982, and was later published in the United States. Spectator reviewer Peter Quennell felt that "although … Porter's review of the English 18th-century scene contains much interesting material, and is clearly the product of assiduous research, he pays too little attention … to the period's real achievement," which, in the reviewer's opinion, is "its extraordinary creative record."

One of Porter's first books about mental illness in history (for which subject he frequently adopts "madness," the more commonly used term from the periods he examines) is his three-volume editorial collaboration with W.F. Bynum and Michael Shepherd, The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry. A Kirkus Reviews writer praised the effort as "a valuable reference work on a very specialized yet compelling facet of history." Even better known is Porter's 1988 tome Mind-Forg'd Manacles: A History of Madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency. In this work, he uses excerpts from diaries and letters penned during the Restoration and the eighteenth century to examine the changes in attitude toward mental illness. He also describes methods of treatment, from the famed Bethlem Hospital—better known as Bedlam—to the physicians who attempted to help King George III as he declined into insanity. In addition, Porter takes pains to argue against the theory of French deconstructionist philosopher Michel Foucault, who asserted that the increase in confinement of mental patients was part of a conspiracy to rid European society of its undesirable elements. According to Elliot S. Valenstein, discussing Mind-Forg'd Manacles in the New York Times Book Review, "Porter … knows the period very well and he writes in an engaging style, but the book is mainly descriptive; he attempts little integration of the information he presents." Another of Porter's books, A Social History of Madness: The World through the Eyes of the Insane, saw print at roughly the same time as Mind-Forg'd Manacles. As the subtitle implies, this work focuses on the experiences of the mentally ill themselves.

In 1991 Porter edited The Faber Book of Madness. This collection of essays extends the range of Porter's usual historical focus by discussing a nineteenth-century woman institutionalized by her husband for disagreeing with him on religious matters, as well as the early twentieth-century practice of using insulin shock as a method of treating mental patients. Bryan Appleyard applauded Porter's work on The Faber Book of Madness in the Spectator, noting that the editor's "scholarship and suave charm carry the text." The reviewer advised readers to "handle this book with care, but handle it."

On more general medical matters, Porter edited Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Society in 1985. In the words of Stuart Clark in the English Historical Review, "the contributors trace the attitudes and beliefs which, in traditional societies, informed the lay experience of illness and the resort to medication. In short," he finished, "they attempt the history of being sick." Clark went on to praise Patients and Practitioners as "a volume refreshingly free from anachronism." Though Times Literary Supplement writer Ludmilla Jordanova questioned the book's "conceptual framework," asking whether it was meant to be "a study of lay views of medicine in general, or of the response of certain individuals to their own suffering, or of patients as a category," she admitted that Patients and Practitioners "does teach some useful lessons."

Health for Sale: Quackery in England, 1660–1850 became available to readers in 1989. In its pages Porter makes the case that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries purveyors of potions and odd courses of treatment did just as well at curing patients as true physicians who had followed the formal university course of study. As Pat Rogers put it in the Times Literary Supplement, the author "points out with a wealth of supporting evidence that the 'legitimate' practitioners of Hanoverian England used much the same regimes, pharmacopoeia and publicity techniques as the outsiders." Examples Porter discusses include those of Chevalier John Taylor, who successfully treated eye problems, and James Graham, who offered infertile couples the opportunity to conceive in his bizarrely designed Celestial Bed. Rogers went on to offer his judgment that "Porter has written a splendid book, whose chief purpose is to insert the story of quackery into the picture of a consumer-led economy under a laissez-faire Hanoverian regime which lacked the will and the means to run the quacks out of town." Clark, in another piece for the English Historical Review, applauded Health for Sale as a "hugely entertaining" book in which Porter "treat[s] the culture of quackery more broadly, and … more sympathetically, than any previous scholar." Christopher C. Booth gave the tome high praise as well in Nature, noting that "Porter gives a highly readable ac-count of his subject" and that "his view of medical history embraces not only the lives of the practitioners he so sympathetically describes, but also the views of their long-suffering patients."

In the same year of Health for Sale's publication, one of Porter's collaboration with his wife, Dorothy, also saw print. In Sickness and in Health: The British Experience, 1650–1850 "constitutes the first major attempt to analyse the all-pervasive 'sickness culture' of pre-modern England," according to Peter Elmer in the English Historical Review. Elmer went on to discuss how the book attempts to explain the way in which the constant threat of illness and death left its mark upon two hundred years of British society, and wound up proclaiming it "an invaluable starting-point for the specialist student of Britain's medical past." Observer contributor Rosemary Dinnage seemed to offer a favorable opinion of In Sickness and in Health, as well, remarking that "more surprising than the differences between old and new attitudes are the similarities." A Virginia Quarterly Review reviewer summed it up as "one of the Porters' most significant studies to date."

Though Porter's Doctor of Society: Thomas Beddoes and the Sick Trade in Late-Enlightenment England would seem to be a biography of a particular medical practitioner, it is, according to Jan Golinski in Isis, "a finely focused study of Beddoes's ideas about medical reform, in both its therapeutic and institutional dimensions." These ideas, Golinski continued, are "set against the background of Enlightenment debates on the relations between medicine and society." The critic felt that "Porter does not really succeed in making the case for [Beddoes's] stature or influence as a medical thinker," but observed that the author's "writing, as always, is fluent and captivating." Jo Hays, critiquing Doctor of Society in the American Historical Review, judged that "Porter's fluent style and his sympathy for his subject … make the book an attractive exploration of the interplay between high scientific expectations and complex social realities." Ann Dally affirmed in History Today that Doctor of Society "contains a wealth of well-written material, informative and scholarly notes and a splendid bibliography."

Another editorial effort by Porter, Myths of the English, also became available in 1992. The essays in this collection explore various icons of British life, ranging from specific people such as the Duke of Wellington to English types such as the schoolteacher and the bobby (police officer), as well as holidays such as Guy Fawkes Day and Armistice Day. These topics are ones that people feel knowledgeable about, but the articles discuss some forgotten truths behind them. "My favorites are the ones on Mother Goose and Guy Fawkes Day," reported Patrick Brantlinger in the American Historical Review, "but they all represent careful scholarship." Journal of Interdisciplinary History critic Peter Stansky confirmed that "the essays are illuminating on the making of various English institutions and the purposes that they have served since."

In 1995 Porter collaborated with Leslie Hall on The Facts of Life: The Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650–1950. The pair discuss both authors and texts about sexuality that were available to British readers during a period running from the Interregnum through World War II. Though the writer was a French physician, Nicolas Venette's The Art of Conjugal Love was familiar to the educated Englishman interested in the subject. Venette treated sex as a wholesome activity, but focused on its procreational purpose, offering advice about the best positions for conception. Another work, the anonymous Aristotle's Masterpiece, went through several editions, taking a matter-of-fact tone in its seventeenth-century incarnation but becoming a much more veiled reference during the Victorian Era. Another anonymous but often reprinted volume was Onania, first available in 1710, which blamed masturbation for a multitude of physical and mental calamities. Porter and his coauthor also revisit the knowledge-dispersing efforts of James Graham of Celestial Bed fame. They also offer discussion of Marie Stopes, whose 1918 work, Married Love, was extremely progressive: it maintained that women naturally feel sexual desire, though it must frequently be awakened by skill on the part of men. "As will be clear, The Facts of Life is by no means a solemn tome," explained Trev Broughton in Isis. "Among the many pleasures of the book—its meticulous scholarship, its critical discrimination, its breadth of allusion and scope—I would include its worldly, even slightly ribald tone." The year before The Facts of Life saw print, another of Porter's collaborations with Teich, Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science: The History of Attitudes to Sexuality, was published.

In 1998 Porter published The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity. Though he ranges from the time of the ancient Greeks to the present day in this volume, his primary focus is on the medical breakthroughs that have happened in Western medicine since scientists in Renaissance Europe began cutting up cadavers to learn more about the way the human body functions. The development of anesthesia for surgery during the 1840s, Florence Nightingale's emphasis on cleanliness in medical facilities a decade later, and the advent of sulfa and penicillin during the 1930s and 1940s are all part of the author's survey. "Porter," according to David A. Hollinger in the New York Times Book Review, "is no uncritical apologist for the medical establishment, nor does he disparage the accomplishments of modern medicine. His central point," the critic continued, "is that we are caught up in a revolution of rising expectations generated by a series of spectacular events that occurred since the middle of the last century." Hollinger went on to praise The Greatest Benefit to Mankind as a "crisply written, often entertaining history."

More recently, Porter has edited a number of reference works for Cambridge and Oxford universities. The Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, for example, "was conceived as a way to right the wrong done to the sciences in ordinary compilations of quotations, and it rises admirably to the occasion," commented Manya Chylinski in the Library Journal. The book exists as "a corrective to the paucity of scientific material in the usual books of quotations," observed Victoria Glendinning in Spectator. The dictionary includes material from scientists themselves, as well as a broad range of specialists and intellectuals from outside the sciences. Glendinning further commented that "this extraordinary compilation is infinitely richer than a trawl through existing collections," adding that it is "for long, ruminative browsing—once you start you really can't stop—rather than for just checking a reference or finding a quote for a particular purpose." Chylinski called the book an "impressive anthology of scientific wisdom."

Porter added another volume of medical history to his resume with Gout: The Patrician Malady. He examines not only the medical aspects of gout, a painful swelling of the lower extremities, but the social and cultural aspects of it as well. Porter and coauthor G.S. Rousseau explore the medical history of gout and discover that it has long been an affliction of mankind. They discuss its causes, relate various treatments, and uncover that there was an almost mystical element to having gout: sufferers thought it prevented worse diseases and was an aid in the creative process. Gout was, in many ways, metaphoric, and could be used to suggest many unsavory things about the upper classes who routinely suffered from it. Michael H. Shirley, writing in the Historian, remarked that the book is a "study of a long-neglected subject." Shirley concluded, "This is an important book, thoroughly researched and documented, and one that can be read profitably by any social historian."

In a work reminiscent of Health for Sale, Porter's Quacks: Fakers and Charlatans in English Medicine reveals that medical chicanery is not a new phenomenon, but is instead a scourge that has existed nearly as long as the stuffy of medicine itself. However, Porter points out that early physicians were often only slightly better trained that any fakers, and that doctors once had a deserved reputation as being as likely to kill as cure. "Whether we like it or not, the portrayal of medicine throughout the ages as a 'noble profession' owes more to Victorian propaganda than to sound historical scholarship," noted Tim Stokes in the British Medical Journal. Still, the charlatans came with no intent to help or heal, and their theatrical antics resulted in more sales of goods from wrought-up emotions than medical necessity. In the early days, Porter notes, legitimate physicians were as dependent on sometimes capricious market forces as the fakers who followed them. "Porter presents a highly readable account" of how both regular physicians and quacks flourished, failed, or got rich during the early days of medicine in Britain, Stokes commented.

Bodies Politic: Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650–1900 examines a number of historical medical topics covering a 250-year period in Britain. In this book, Porter attempts to combine medical history with visual imagery representing the body and medicine. Images of healthy bodies are placed side-by-side with diseased and deformed bodies. Legitimate physicians are placed alongside their quackery-practicing counterparts. Patients and doctors are caricatured in ways that get close to the heart of early medicine. Through it all, "the style of Porter's prose so delights that even those who scrupulously avoid tomes coming from university presses should find themselves smiling with pleasure," commented Elizabeth Lane Furdell in History: Review of New Books. In considering Porter's prolific literary output, Furdell remarked, "What astounds even more is the quality of Porter's oeuvre: simultaneously erudite and witty, compulsively readable, and utterly fresh despite his mining well-worked resources."

Returning to the history of madness, The Confinement of the Insane: International Perspectives, 1800–1965, was edited by Porter and David Wright. It contains fourteen essays on the different methods of dealing with the clinically insane in various parts of the world from 1800 to 1965. In his introduction, Porter "surveys the current state of historical writing on the treatment of the mentally ill and shows how important it is to have a global perspective from which to understand the complex history," noted a contributor to Contemporary Review. The papers cover asylums in Britain, Geneva, Toronto, Australia, Japan, the United States, Argentina, Mexico, India, Nigeria, and elsewhere. "Until more comparative work in the history of psychiatry comes along, it is hard to imagine a better place to start reading about it than this book," a reviewer stated in Contemporary Review.

Flesh in the Age of Reason, which appeared after Porter's death in 2002, is a "posthumously published masterpiece," commented a Booklist contributor. Porter considers carefully the "war between flesh and reason, or body and spirit," and especially how that war manifested itself during the European Enlightenment, noted Terry Eagleton in Harper's Magazine. "For the Age of Reason, the body was both a source of pleasure and a thorough nuisance. It was also a worrying sign of imperfection in a divinely created world," Eagelton observed. "Porter ultimately locates the fetishism of the body in a much larger cultural Enlightenment reassessment of human identity necessitated by the fading of religious conviction," remarked Bryce Christensen in Booklist. The limits of personal identity, as defined by the body, were being redefined by critical thinkers who were either rejecting or reworking Christian doctrine pertaining to the body and soul. "As Porter shows brilliantly in this book, the Platonists and idealists who deny that the body has anything to do with the self are just as mistaken as the reductionists and materialists for whom this inert lump of flesh is all we are," Eagleton commented. A Kirkus Reviews critic called the book "an impressive and accessible work of scholarship."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, June, 1993, Jo Hays, review of Doctor of Society: Thomas Beddoes and the Sick Trade in Late-Enlightenment England, p. 872; October, 1994, Patrick Brantlinger, review of Myths of the English, p. 1314.

Booklist, February 1, 2004, Bryce Christensen, review of Flesh in the Age of Reason, p. 947; January 1, 2005, review of Flesh in the Age of Reason, p. 767.

British Book News, January, 1982, Charles Vereker, review of The Enlightenment in National Context, p. 17.

British Medical Journal, April 14, 2001, Tim Stokes, review of Quacks: Fakers and Charlatans in English Medicine, p. 934; August 18, 2001, Eoin O'Brien, review of Bodies Politic: Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650–1900, p. 405.

Catholic Historical Review, April, 2004, Jacques M. Gres-Glayer, review of Toleration in Enlightenment Europe, p. 326.

Contemporary Review, January, 2001, review of Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World, p. 64; August, 2001, review of Bodies Politic, p. 125; January, 2004, review of The Confinement of the Insane: International Perspectives, 1800–1965, p. 64; May, 2004, Anthony Radice, "Sir Ray Porter and the Sense of Self," review of Flesh in the Age of Reason, p. 307.

English Historical Review, July, 1987, Stuart Clark, review of Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Society, p. 682; April, 1992, Peter Elmer, review of In Sickness and in Health: The British Experience, 1650–1850, p. 480; April, 1992, Roger Smith, review of Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry, Volume 3, p. 506; January, 1993, Stuart Clark, review of Health for Sale: Quackery in England, 1660–1850, p. 212; February, 2001, T. J. Hochstrasser, review of Toleration in Enlightenment Europe, p. 235.

Harper's Magazine, March, 2004, Terry Eagleton, "I Am, Therefore I Think: The Plight of the Body in Modern Thought," review of Flesh in the Age of Reason, p. 87.

Historian, winter, 2001, Michael H. Shirley, review of Gout: The Patrician Malady, p. 473.

History: Review of New Books, fall, 2001, Elizabeth Lane Furdell, review of Bodies Politic, p. 18; winter, 2004, Elizabeth Lane Furdell, review of The Confinement of the Insane, p. 81.

History Today, November, 1992, Anne Dally, review of Doctor of Society: Thomas Beddoes and the Sick Trade in Late-Enlightenment England, p. 53; January, 2004, Penelope J. Corfield, review of Flesh in the Age of Reason, p. 56.

Isis, September, 1995, Jan Golinski, review of Doctor of Society, p. 496; June, 1996, Trev Broughton, review of The Facts of Life: The Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650–1950, p. 319; March, 2001, Russell C. Maulitz, review of The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity, p. 139; June, 2004, review of The Confinement of the Insane, p. 348; September, 2004, Christopher Lawrence, review of Flesh in the Age of Reason, p. 493.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, October, 2001, Thomas Munck, review of Toleration in Enlightenment Europe, p. 760.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, spring, 1995, Peter Stansky, review of Myths of the English, p. 687; spring, 2001, Jeffrey S. Ravel, review of Toleration of Enlightenment Europe, p. 615.

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 1985, review of The Anatomy of Madness, p. 1187; January 1, 2004, review of Flesh in the Age of Reason, p. 27.

Kliatt, November, 2004, Daniel Levinson, review of Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine, p. 40.

Lancet, December 23, 2000, James A. Galloway, "The Enlightened World," review of Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World, p. 2199; June 25, 2005, Brian Hurwitz and Ruth Richardson, "Eureka Moments," review of The Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, p. 2170.

Library Journal, December, 2000, Nigel Tappin, review of The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment, p. 160; July 1, 2005, Manya Chylinski, review of The Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, p. 125.

Nature, September 14, 1989, Christopher C. Booth, review of Health for Sale: Quackery in England 1660–1850, p. 115.

New Statesman, October 11, 1991, Chris Savage King, review of The Faber Book of Madness, p. 24.

New York Times Book Review, April 10, 1988, Elliot S. Valenstein, review of Mind-Forg'd Manacles: A History of Madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency, p. 30; May 3, 1998, David A. Hollinger, review of The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, p. 11.

Observer (London, England), December 18, 1988, Rosemary Dinnage, review of In Sickness and in Health, p. 43.

Radical Teacher, summer, 2001, James Thompson, review of English Society in the Eighteenth Century, p. 43.

Science, January, 1978, Kenneth Taylor, review of The Making of Geology: Earth Science in Britain, 1660–1815, p. 166; May 28, 2004, Adrian Woolfson, "How the Human Animal Found Its Self," review of Flesh in the Age of Reason, p. 1248.

Spectator, May 15, 1982, Peter Quennell, review of The Enlightenment in National Context, p. 19; September 21, 1991, Brian Appleyard, review of The Faber Book of Madness, p. 34; April 9, 2005, Victoria Glendinning, "The Music of the Earth and the Dance of the Atoms," review of The Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, p. 44.

Times Literary Supplement, September 19, 1986, Ludmilla Jordanova, review of Patients and Practitioners, p. 1024; October 20, 1989, Pat Rogers, review of Health for Sale, p. 1146.

Virginia Quarterly Review, spring, 1990, review of In Sickness and in Health, p. 44.