Bodies of Evidence: self-experiment in the eighteenth century

In this period, physicians, including the Bath practitioner George Cheyne, experimented on their own bodies in the name of medical progress and self-improvement: they manipulated their diets, tried new drugs on themselves, and wrote about their experiences.

This talk will show how, though they often involved considerable risk, these experiments could gain a physician authority and credibility in a crowded market.

Dr Rosalind Powell is senior lecturer in English at the University of Bristol, where she researches the relationship between literature and science of the long eighteenth century. She is the author of Perception and Analogy (Manchester University Press, 2021).