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This compilation seeks to explore the ways in which perceptions of the body within society, culture, and nature changed throughout the period from the end of the 18th century through the 19th century through the examination of concrete historical objects in the form of "manuals". The ultimate goal of this project is to shed light on the nature of the fundamental problems within the social constructs in which our present bodies exist.

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Osamu Hattori is Professor for the Modern European History at the Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.

He is the author of Doitsu "Shirouto-Ishi" Dan (The Laymen Association in Germany: Homeopathic Social Movement)(Tokyo, 1997) and Kindai Igaku no Hikari to Kage(Light and Shadow of the Modern Medicine)(Tokyo, 2004).

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