Roy Porter Student Prize Essay, Gilding the Pill: The Sensuous Consumption of Patent Medicines, 1815–1841

Gilding the Pill: The Sensuous Consumption of Patent Medicines, 1815–1841

This article aims to remove patent medicines from the traditional quack/orthodox binary and reconsider them as material objects within sensory networks of production, distribution and consumption. Patent medicines offer a unique perspective on material history by being twice consumed; first through traditional exchange, followed by the private act of ingestion. Recognising both these interpreta...

Roy Porter Student Essay Prize WinnerPsychiatry Limited: Hyperactivity and the Evolution of American Psychiatry, 1957–1980

Hyperactivity is the most commonly diagnosed childhood psychiatric disorder in north America. Most physicians believe that the disorder is a neurological dysfunction which is best treated with stimulants, such as ritalin. Accounts of the history of hyperactivity written by physicians, psychologists and even historians suggest that the disorder was always conceived as such. This paper argues tha...

Roy Porter Student Prize Essay Boils, Pushes and Wheals: Reading Bumps on the Body in Early Modern England

Bodily bumps in early modern England were not simply collections of humors that needed to be lanced and drained. Diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of skin swellings comprised a deeply rich semiotics that both patients and healers read according to a range of biographical factors, incidents, sensations, observations and experiences. Using diaries and case histories in seventeenthcentury surgica...

Roy Porter

Obituary: Roy Sydney Porter (1946-2002).