"The nine essays and more than ninety illustrations that comprise this volume reveal how visual imagery has played a significant role throughout history in reinforcing and establishing definitions of sickness and standards for physical well-being. Each author demonstrates how works of art and the imagery of popular culture both reflect and reinforce the power of medical beliefs to define and to limit human behavior, and how art and medicine work together to communicate social directives in support of a perceived common good. The essays range in topic from the seventeenth century to the present day, utilizing an interdisciplinary, contextual methodology that reconstructs the issues of an era and examines works of art against historical events and ideas."--BOOK JACKET.