Chapter 1 tracks frenzy’s trajectory as a medical diagnosis between 1500 and 1700. It offers an introduction to frenzy as it was understood by eight medical practitioners, four of whom came of age in a time of relative stability in English medicine (1560–1640) and four in a time of rapid change (1640–1700). It shows how, from the mid seventeenth century, the old humoral definition of frenzy was altered to fit new medical philosophies – chemical, mechanistic, and corpuscular – and new models of human physiology. Tracing the contours of the disease over two centuries, it highlights points of continuity as well as change. Throughout this period, it argues, theorists from diverse schools explained frenzy’s effects with reference both to the solid structures of the body and the fluids which flowed through them. This chapter argues that it was the devastating effects of brain disease which galvanized medical theorists to seek to explain disorders of the mind as disruptions of material ‘animal spirits’.

Ginsberg was famous for chronicling every facet of his life, and his last poems in the mid 1990s frequently reflect an intense self-consciousness about his final illnesses. While earlier in his career, the body was an important site for Ginsberg’s poetics of candor, confrontation, and erotic epiphanies, he remained equally adamant as his health faltered in ascertaining his physical deterioration in poems such as “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush” and “Sphincter.” Even during his final period, however, Ginsberg’s level of literary fame provided him access to figures in popular music that amplified his cultural prominence and enabled him to retain a sense of artistic relevance. Simultaneously with his meditations on death, Ginsberg’s culminating poems maintained his renowned sly humor about his social status as a writer whose expansive cultural reputation included the continuity of radical political critique. This chapter on his posthumous volume Death and Fame: Last Poems 1993–1997 (1999) explores Ginsberg’s attempts to reconcile the problematic contexts of fame’s durability while struggling to find succor, in both Buddhist and poetic terms, with his accelerating disability and terminal departure.

Medical experts and epidemiologists knew the importance of hygiene on the home front. They convinced local, state, and federal authorities that the war on disease had to be fought. Consequently, the Modern Health Crusade, which originated in Detroit, became a nationwide movement in 1915. Federal authorities realized that a high infant mortality rate threatened the fabric of American society in the long run. Additionally, in order to build a strong and healthy army (and nation), bodies had to be physically fit. Children began to matter to the military and the nation writ large. As hygiene became a national concern, between 1914 and 1918, both medical and military authorities promoted hygienic standards to lift the nation.

I begin with the bodily good of health, which perfects our organic functioning beyond the rudimentary level required for life. I detail how such functioning operates at different bodily levels, e.g., within cells, tissues, vessels, glands etc. I then move on to bodily abilities, which (not being autonomic functions) reflect the exercise of agency or voluntary control. Such abilities can be divided into active and passive powers, these affording a wider relation to the world in virtue of their intentionality. The third topic is bodily beauty. I argue that this is not a bodily perfection, since it is beholden less to our bodily powers or their configuration than to judgements of character and the social context in which our bodies operate. Finally, I explore body alteration. This constitutes a spectrum, from (perfective) medical intervention to (imperfective) mutilation, with what I call mere body ‘modification’ in the middle. I conclude with two cases that are difficult to place on this spectrum: namely male circumcision and cosmetic ‘surgery’. I argue that the former is likely a bodily imperfection or bad and the latter likely bound up with further imperfections.

This chapter analyzes the first edition of the health magazine “Vida e Saúde” [Life and Health], published in January of 1939 by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church’s (SDAC) publisher, Casa Publicadora Brasileira. This periodical was released during the dictatorship of Estado Novo (1937–1945) and endorsed some of the eugenist and hygienist public policies of its time. Although the magazine did not advocate Adventist proselytism, it promoted the health message conveyed by the Adventist prophetess Ellen G. White, making this magazine a unique example of print media dedicated to questions of health guided by religious and creationist worldviews. It also highlights the importance of the Adventist print media as one of the hallmarks of this church in Brazil since its beginnings in the late nineteenth century.

Social relationships are a fundamental component of the human experience, and decades of relationships research supports their central role in health and well-being. This chapter offers a broad look at research on social support in the context of close relationships, with particular emphasis on the role of social support in health. We first give an overview of the foundational theories of the field and discuss how social support has historically been conceptualized. We then discuss contemporary extensions of this work, including theories of invisible support, perceived responsiveness, thriving, dyadic perspectives of coping, and the implications of technology for support processes. We highlight important research on social support in diverse gender and cultural contexts, emphasizing the need for intersectional perspectives in this space. The chapter concludes with a discussion of key considerations for future research and intervention.

Social relationships are not only linked to emotional well-being, but also significantly associated with physical health. Reviewing the epidemiological and experimental body of research reveals evidence of directional and potentially causal associations between social connection and health and longevity. This is consistent with theoretical approaches to social relationships including attachment, social baseline, social network, and social support theory, all of which identify social relationships as vital to health and well-being. Theoretical models further conceptualize how it is that social relationships influence health. The growing scientific evidence documents some of the biological and behavioral pathways involved. While the evidence on the associations between social relationships and health is robust, the literature is uneven pointing to the need for further research on the complex nature of relationship quality and tech-based social connection.

This chapter discusses Wollstonecraft’s attitude to the body and to ways in which physical upbringing can harm or improve all aspects of life. Women’s lack of physical education, she argues, means that they grow up to become less healthy, in their bodies and in their minds. I compare Wollstonecraft’s arguments to two recent ones. The first, by philosopher of science Sharyn Clough, suggests that Wollstonecraft was quite right to attribute women’s poor heath to misguided views of femininity. The second, from Iris Marion Young, revisits Wollstonecraft’s view that women’s bodies are trained in such a way that their minds also become confined. Lastly, I turn to Wollstonecraft’s thoughts on the maternal body and on abortion.