Porter, Roy Sydney

▪ 2003

      British historian (b. Dec. 31, 1946, Hitchin, Hertfordshire, Eng.—d. March 3, 2002, St. Leonards, East Sussex, Eng.), wrote scores of scholarly books and papers on a vast array of subjects, most notably British social history and the history of medicine. His best-known works included English Society in the Eighteenth Century (1982), Health for Sale: Quackery in England 1660–1850 (1989), London: A Social History (1994), The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present (1997), Gout: The Patrician Malady (1998), and Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (2000), which won the 2001 Wolfson Prize for History. Madness: A Brief History was published in early 2002. Porter was named a fellow of the British Academy in 1994.

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