All too human.

Flesh in the Age of Reason

The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul Roy Porter

W. W. Norton, $29.95, 574 pp.

The suggestiveness of the human body is inexhaustible. To the ancient Greeks, the body was an object of esthetic contemplation, raised by their plastic art to the loftiest peaks of sublimity. To medieval mystics it was contemptible: a repository of filth and sinful impulses best handled by neglect, mortification, and denial. The body's intricate mechanism has been, for some, an emblem of the wisdom of a supreme and beneficent creator; for others, a mere object of scientific curiosity. Today's consumer society has turned the body into a commodity, since almost every organ, many cells, and even some bodily secretions, are exploited for financial gain by various industrial concerns.

Different views of the body have been held by different societies, even by different subgroups or sects within the same society. Add to this the endless imagery that the body continues to elicit. Reflect on the multitude of ways by which it--a living entity endowed with a sex--interacts with other living beings. The inescapable conclusion will be that to write a "cultural history of the human body," even one limited in scope, is a rash undertaking bordering on folly. Yet, Flesh in the Age of Reason is such an attempt, and the man who, not without good reason, felt equal to the challenge, was the late Roy Porter, perhaps the greatest medical historian of our times.

Porter, an extraordinarily gifted and prolific author, wrote dozens of books, and edited or contributed chapters to hundreds more, and published, it has been said, "faster than most of his public could read." His energy was prodigious: needing no more than four to five hours of sleep, he authored countless articles in magazines and newspapers, wrote book, film, theater, and exhibition reviews, lectured indefatigably, and was a regular broadcaster on British TV and radio. Unconventional and flamboyant, this English professor was noted for his fondness of chunky bracelets, medallions, earrings, conspicuous chest hair, and denim wear; it is little wonder that those who had not made his acquaintance sometimes confused him with one of his students. He died unexpectedly in his mid-fifties, in March 2002, at the height of his powers, while cycling in East Sussex.

In an interview in the Times Higher Education Supplement in 2001, he declared that we have "three bodies. There's nature: the body natural; society--the body politic; and the inner body as well. All thinking and experience is an attempt to relate nature, society, and self, and if you like I got the nature bit out of my system first." This statement may be taken as a shorthand description of the themes of much of his work, and of the main ideas developed in Flesh in the Age of Reason. The first part, covering more than a hundred pages, deals with historical attempts to define the nature of the "inner self," that is, consciousness, mind, or the soul. Throughout the remainder of the work we are presented with an ambitious panorama of how society, philosophy, medicine, and certain prominent individuals have viewed the body. Thus, the book surveys perceptions of the body as "flesh," the perishable framework, and as "spirit," the subtle, ethereal element believed to compound it. To which the generality of mankind has ever attributed a metaphysical destiny. A more ambitious project is scarcely conceivable.

As indicated in the title, it is the Enlightenment, purportedly the "Age of Reason," which is being examined. More specifically, the focus is on eighteenth-century England, a vantage point whose relevance is indisputable. For the Western world is still living in the aftermath of that era, whose attitudes, ideas, prejudices, and sentiments England largely shaped.

The scholarship brought to bear on this work is astonishing. Over two thousand references are listed in the bibliography. A book of this formidable erudition is not easily reviewed in a few paragraphs. Suffice it to say that the concepts surveyed are not presented as purely intellectual, abstract notions, but are incorporated into narratives, and these in turn are supported by thorough, yet judicious commentary. For instance, the chapter on Jonathan Swift's opera magna, although built on Swift's views of the tensions between flesh and spirit, is nevertheless so wide-ranging and complete that it could well serve as an introductory essay in the best edition of his complete works. The same may be said of other personalities and notable works examined. Addison, Steele, Samuel Johnson, Gibbon, Coleridge, Sterne, Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Blake: the major figures of the English Enlightenment (and many lesser known) are scanned with equal sagacity. Indeed, in the elegant foreword written by Simon Schama, we are told that Porter's extensive discussion of Tristram Shandy "may be the single most perceptive and intensely engaged commentary on this book ever written."

Flesh in the Age of Reason will become an indispensable reference work; yet, its author wears his massive learning lightly, without vain displays of esoteric learning or scholastic pedantry. The agile phrase, the uniquely apposite quotation, the savory aside, and the not infrequent sparkle of wit, are especially commendable. Of the Earl of Shaftesbury's lofty views of the self, Porter writes: "The nobleman clearly regarded his flesh as a bridgehead of vulgarity distressingly lodged within himself." He quotes Swift, discoursing on the misery of the external body: "Last Week I saw a Woman flay'd, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her Person for the worse." But Porter does not shy away from the pithy language of the street, when it seems called for. Thus, commenting on Swift's musings that the grand political designs of Louis XIV may have issued from less than exalted bodily ailments, to wit, fistula in ano: "Swift said it all: all his glorious schemes emitted from his vilest and lowest orifice, the Sun King was a pain in the arse." These stylistic ingredients transform what might have been a ponderous treatise for experts into a thoroughly enjoyable work within the reach of the educated, nonspecialist reader.

F. Gonzalez-Crussi, emeritus professor of pathology, lives in Chicago.