Tom Jones is a typical eighteenth-century hero: he is beaten, bullied, seduced, betrayed, and banished by numerous other characters in the narrative. He performs very little action himself, and that rather unsuccessfully. In one escapade in Book XIII, the hero overwhelmed by London society and ignored by his hosts, Fielding writes that “Poor Jones was rather a Spectator of this elegant scene, t...

European perceptions of the Islamic Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century have often been read through the prism of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1748). His ‘moral geography’ depicted a despotic and decayed Islamic Ottoman polity in contrast to the dynamism displayed in European states. Montesquieu’s comparisons and contrasts between the Ottoman East and Europe appear to support Edwa...

The idea that smallpox could be eradicated was not necessarily the ultimate aim when inoculation was introduced in Europe in the 1720s. This potentiality was not clearly articulated as an aim until the end of the eighteenth century. This article argues that during most of the eighteenth century, the main aim of inoculation was to lead people as safely as possible through what was regarded as an...

This article sheds new light on illegitimacy in eighteenth-century Britain through an analysis of evidence from 36 parishes across the former Welsh counties Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire. Quantitative analysis of illegitimacy ratios demonstrates that levels were significantly higher in certain, but not all, parts of Wales in the eighteenth century. This evidence is considered in relation to e...

I In the introduction to his History of sexuality, Michel Foucault pointed to the eighteenth century as the period in which sexuality became a medical concern and women were, in his words, subjected to "hysterization".' By this term, Foucault probably meant that medicine began to pay greater attention to female bodily functions, trying to explain anew women's behaviour and physical complaints w...

Background & objectives: Today, the world is facing with increase of population and shortage of foods. Organic products are produced without the intervention of any chemicals or artificial methods. In spite of general teaching to increase nutritional knowledge, there still is a deep gap between recommendations and what is seen in nutritional performance, so choosing the right teaching methods i...

or injured paupers has often been noted. Yet in the mid-eighteenth century, provincial hospitals emerged as an option to complement the efforts of parish officers in some places. Mary Fissell's work on the Bristol Infirmary has established the similarity of circumstances which pushed people on to poor relief or into an infirmary, but it has not yet been determined whether there was a substantia...

The key to understanding law and authority in late eighteenth-century Ireland lies in extraordinary cases. Some historians have dismissed the political trials of reformers and activists as unrepresentative of the "typical" processes of the Irish judicial system. They argue that the majority of Irishmen in the eighteenth century did not believe that their society was particularly violent and tha...