Medical texts provide a powerful means of accessing contemporary perceptions of illness and through them assumptions about the nature of the body and identity. By mapping these perceptions, from their nineteenth-century focus on illness located in a biological body through to their 'discovery' of the psycho-social patient of the late twentieth century, a history of identity, both physical and psychological, is revealed.

DAVID ARMSTRONG is Reader in Sociology as applied to Medicine in the Guy's, King's and St Thomas' Medical School at King's College London. He has published widely on the sociology of medical knowledge, including Political Anatomy of the Body: Medical Knowledge in the Twentieth Century.

Prologue Constructing the Body Negotiating Death Discovering Origins Making the Body Move Creating a Social Identity Invoking Subjectivity Instilling Agency Confessing Death Dimensionalizing Identity Becoming at Risk Death of the Old Hospital Birth of Primary Care Ecce Homo Identity of the Observer The Subject of Knowledge A Note on Methodology