A Short History of Medicine

Blood and Guts

Porter writing on the subject he is most famous for (HarperCollins had a major success with his big history of medicine THE GREATEST BENEFIT TO MANKIND)

Roy Porter was until his retirement Professor in the Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. He last book ENLIGHTENMENT won a 2001 Wolfson Prize.  Roy Porter died March 3rd 2002.

Mankind's battle to stay alive is the greatest of all subjects.  This brief, witty and unusual book by Britain's greatest medical historian compresses into a tiny span a lifetime spent thinking about millennia of human ingenuity in the quest to cheat death.  Each chapter sums up one of these battlefields (surgery, doctors, disease, hospitals, laboratories and the human body) in a way that is both frightening and elating.  Startlingly illustrated, A SHORT HISTORY OF MEDICINE is the ideal presentfor anyone who is keenly aware of their own mortality and wants to do something about it.  It is also a wonderful memorial to one of Penguin's greatest historians.

English Society in the Eighteenth Century

The Penguin Social History of Britain

Roy Porter was, until his retirement, Professor in the Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. He died in 2002.

A portrait of 18th century England, from its princes to its paupers, from its metropolis to its smallest hamlet. The topics covered include - diet, housing, prisons, rural festivals, bordellos, plays, paintings, and work and wages.

Britain and the Creation of the Modern World

Enlightenment

Roy Porter is Professor in the Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London.

For generations the traditional focus for those wishing to understand the roots of the modern world has been France on the eve of the Revolution. Porter certainly acknowledges France's importance, but here makes an overwhelming case for consideringBritain the true home of modernity - a country driven by an exuberance, diversity and power of invention comparable only to twentieth-century America. Porter immerses the reader in a society which, recovering from the horrors of the Civil War and decisively reinvigorated by the revolution of 1688, had emerged as something new and extraordinary - a society unlike any other in the world.

A Social History

London

ROY PORTER is Professor in the Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London. He is most recently the author of THE GREATEST BENEFIT TO MANKIND (HarperCollins, 1998) and the forthcoming (10/00) Allen Lane title ENLIGHTENMENT: BRITAIN AND THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD.

'Roy Porter, a historian of formidable range, turns to urban history in this marvellously lucid, informative and passionate book... Porter's facts are always at the service of the narrative, which has a finely maintained momentum, balancing statistics with the words of historians, diarists and novelists, poets and churchmen: Pepys, Boswell, Fielding, Walpole, Blake, Mayhew, Wells, Woolf, Spark, ... a timely and brilliant book.' CLAIRE TOMALIN, EVENING STANDARD 'A vivid celebration of the city, but also an elegy for its decline, bubbling with statistics and anecdote, from Boadicea to Betjeman.' RICHARD HOLMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Roy Porter

'As an introduction to early modern thinking and the impact of past ideas on present lives, this book can find few equals and no superiors. Porter is a witty, humane writer with an extraordinary vocabulary and a sparkling sense of fun. Whether he is quoting from obscure medical texts or analysing scabrous diaries, dishing the dirt on long-dead bigwigs or evoking sympathy for human suffering, his grasp is masterly and his erudition appealing. I wish I could read it again for the first time: you can.' Times Educational Supplement, Book of the Week  <br/>
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In this startlingly brilliant sequel to the prize-winning ENLIGHTENMENT Roy Porter completes his lifetime's work, offering a magical, enthusiastic and charming account of the writings of some of the most attractive figures ever to write English.

Roy Porter

Books by Roy Porter

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