How humans have felt and thought about the body-our bodies-has never been static. Rather, it has shifted across times and cultures, taking and losing definition due to any number of forces and trends-philosophical, religious, cultural, technological. Sometimes we imagine our identity purely as an extension of our fleshly self and its assemblage of functions, organs, and appendages, sometimes as something entirely separate and discrete-trapped as opposed to defined by our mortal coil, as Hamlet frames it in his famous soliloquy. So, too, over time, our ideas about what constitutes the desirable, the healthy, the beautiful, and the whole have remained partial, each an impression formed by its particular moment in time. pIn this probing and illuminating new book, Fay Bound Alberti deploys the global histories of medicine, pathology, and sensibilities to examine our changing notions of the human body. Each chapter focuses on one part-bones, skin, sexual organs, spine, tongue, heart-reveali