Table of Contents

Introduction 1. The Material Body: The Body as Machine 2. Mind and Body: Nerves, Nervous Disorders and Psychology 3. Consuming: Food, Drugs and Alcohol 4. Contagion and Disease 5. The Profession: Doctors, Hospitals and the Experience of Medicine 6. Treatments and Cures 7. The Body in Pleasure; The Body in Pain 8. Evolution, Genetics and Reproduction 9. Age and Ageing, Death and Dying Suggested Reading and Bibliography Index

Promotional Information

Including poems from the Early Modern period to today, this anthology explores how poetry has reflected changing attitudes to medicine and the human body.

About the Author

Corinna Wagner is Senior Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Exeter, UK. She publishes on the history of medicine and visual culture, and is author of Pathological Bodies: Medicine and Political Culture (2013) and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism (2016). Andy Brown is Senior Lecturer and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Exeter, UK. A widely published poet, novelist and critic, his books of poetry include Exurbia (2014), The Fool and the Physician (2012) and Goose Music (with John Burnside, 2008). His first novel is Apples & Prayers (2015).

Reviews

Does A Body of Work contribute anything substantially new to this genre? The answer is a resounding yes ... [This is] not just an anthology of poems with the relevant subject matter ... but rather an exploration of the relationship between poems and medical beliefs at the time of their writing ... I strongly recommend A Body of Work to anyone interested in poetry about illness, or poetry and medicine, especially students of the health care professions and their teachers.
*Medical Humanities blog*

A Body of Work offers a unique perspective into the history of literature and medicine. Wagner and Brown have created a book that is certainly worth having within easy reach for its accessible engagement with some of the fundamental questions which have shaped contemporary understandings of bodily experience throughout history.
*Centre for Medical Humanities online*

This is a superb collection and I think a first. There are smaller anthologies such as Tools of the Trade but this dwarfs the others. I shall be recommending it widely in my lectures and seminars of the use of poetry in medical education both in the UK and Europe.
*Dr Trevor G Stammers, St Mary's University, UK*