A pioneering contribution to the cultural history of medicine exploring issues as diverse as dissection of the heart, childbirth, masturbation, animal care, hermaphrodites, orthopaedics, 'miracle' drugs, smallpox and sex advice in different European cultures from the 1600s to the present day. Each case study illustrates various roles of mediation; reconciling conflicting ideas in the medical encounter; as an instrument of domination, or conversely, of resistance. Roy Porter's brilliant foreword conveys the methodological significance as well as the pleasure of these essays.

YAARAH BAR-ON Deputy Director, Diaspora Museum, Tel Aviv University LOGIE BARROW Professor of British Social History and Political Traditions, University of Bremen, Germany HERA COOK Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Sydney LOUISE HILL CURTH Lecturer, University of Exeter PALMIRA FONTES DA COSTA Assistant Professor, New University of Lisbon MICHELINE LOUIS-COURVOISIER Geneva Medical School CONSTANCE MALPAS Digital Initiatives Coordinator, New York Academy of Medicine TOINE PIETERS Assistant Professor, Free University of Amsterdam School of Medicine and Professor, Groningen University, the Netherlands SÉVERINE PILLOUD Researcher, Institut Universitaire Romand d'Histoire de la Médicine et de la Santé Publique, Lausanne, Switzerland ROY PORTER MATTHEW RAMSEY Lecturer, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA CATRIEN SANTING Lecturer, University of Groningen, the Netherlands MICHAEL STOLBERG Professor of history of medicine at Munich University, Germany ALFONS ZARZOSO Researcher and curator of the Museum of the History of Medicine of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain