The culmination of a lifelong interest in the metaphysics of the body by the premier social historian of medicine. HOW DID WE COME to a modern understanding of our bodies and souls? What were the breakthroughs that allowed human beings to see themselves in a new light? Starting with the revolutionary ideas of the Renaissance that challenged the sense of the body as a corrupt vessel for the soul, Roy Porter goes on to chart how--through figures as diverse as Locke, Swift, Johnson, and Gibbon--ide...