Roy Porter and Dorothy Porter, In sickness and in health: the British experience, 1650–1850, London, Fourth Estate, 1988, 8vo, pp. 324, £25.00.

Roy Porter

Obituary: Roy Sydney Porter (1946-2002).

In sickness and in health: the British experience, 1650–1850

Until recently, as the authors point out, the history of medicine had doctors as its heroes. Today, when the concern of most researchers is with the social, professional, and institutional aspects of the history of medicine and more broadly with health and healers of all descriptions, modem scholarship has become "increasingly critical of, or even hostile towards, the profession". No one denies...

Powering the porter brewery.

Before canals and railways developed as a major transport network, it was seldom profitable to transport beer inland over more than a few miles. In country towns and villages, therefore, beer would be brewed either by a small 'common' brewery that supplied a handful of pubs and private customers, or in an even smaller brew-house attached to the pub itself. Many families also brewed their own be...

The Patient’s Turn Roy Porter and Psychiatry’s Tales, Thirty Years on

Waking up in a mental hospital isn’t something you plan for. It’s not what I see that astonishes me— I’ve sat through enough loony bin films to have some idea what to expect—but who I am. There have been moments in recent months when I have hardly recognized the desolate woman inhabiting my body and brain; but sooner or later the familiar self would always reappear, sporting her labels—historia...