A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Enlightenment [Paperback]

The Enlightenment, 1650-1800 was a time when people began to take stock of their intrinsic worth as individuals. Of course, slaves were still property, servants and apprentices were indentured, daughters belonged to fathers and brothers, wives to husbands, and paupers were tethered to their parish. But change was in the air as increased population, migration and urbanization began to reshape both national and personal identity. The birth of modern society in the Enlightenment demanded a rethinking of the human body in all its forms, from conception to death and beyond. The history of midwives, medics, colonialists, cross-dressers, corpses, vampires, witches, beggars, beauties, body snatchers, incest and immaculate conceptions  all reveal how the body changed in this age of turbulence and transition.

A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Enlightenmentpresents an overview of the period with essays on the centrality of the human body in birth and death, health and disease, sexuality, beauty and concepts of the ideal, bodies marked by gender, race, class and disease, cultural representations and popular beliefs, and self and society.

Carole Reevesis Outreach Historian at The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London, UK. She is co-author ofMedical Book Illustration:A Short History.

Illustrations
Series Preface

Introduction: Enlightenment Bodies
Carole Reeves, University College London, UK

1 The Body in Birth and Death
Lisa Forman Cody, Claremont McKenna College, USA

2 Pliable Bodies: The Moral Biology of Health and Disease
Kevin Siena, Trent University, Canada

3 Sexual Knowledge: Panspermist Jokes, Reproductive Technologies, and Virgin Births
George Rousseau, Oxford University, UK

4 Medical Knowledge: The Adventures of Mr. Machine, with Morals
Jessica Riskin, Stanford University, USA

5 Popular Beliefs about the Dead Body
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