Preliminary Material -- Acknowledgements / Dorothy Porter and Roy Porter -- Notes on Contributors / Dorothy Porter and Roy Porter -- Introduction / Dorothy Porter and Roy Porter -- Bentham's Utilitarianism and the Provision of Medical Care / Janet Semple -- Southwood Smith: The Intellectual Sources of Public Service / R. K. Webb -- Lyon Playfair and the Idea of Progress: Science and Medicine in Victorian Parliamentary Politics / Anne Hardy -- Désiré Magloire Bourneville and French Anticlericalism during the Third Republic / Bernard Brais -- The Demographic Argument in Soviet Debates over the Legalization of Abortion in the 1920s / Susan Gross Solomon -- Heinrich Zeiss, Hygiene and the Holocaust / Paul Weindling -- The Sick Poor and the State: Arthur Newsholme on Poverty, Disease and Responsibility / John M. Eyler -- The Metamorphosis of Dawson of Penn / Charles Webster -- Christopher Addison: a Realist in Pursuit of Dreams / Frank Honigsbaum -- John Ryle: Doctor of Revolution? / Dorothy Porter -- Doing History, Making Revolution: the Aspirations of Henry E. Sigerist and George Rosen / Elizabeth Fee and Edward T. Morman -- Back Matter / Dorothy Porter and Roy Porter.

The great British reformer Jeremy Bentham wrote that 'the art of legislation is but the art of healing practised upon a large scale'. He added that 'It is the common endeavour of both to relieve men from the miseries of life. But the physician relieves them one by one: the legislator by millions at a time'. Bentham raised the question of the interplay of medicine with politics. It forms an important topic with powerful contemporary overtones. This volume, containing eleven essays plus a lengthy introduction, seeks to explore it historically. It takes a long perspective, covering the last two centuries and also an international viewpoint, examining Britain in detail but also containing contributions dealing with the United States, Germany, Russia and France.

Description based on print version record.