Perfect bodies

The British Museum have just published Perfect bodies: sports, medicine and immortality, edited by Vivienne Lo. Based on an interdisciplinary conference and other academic events and exhibitions which began in 2007, this book explores ideas and training and preserving the perfect body. The chapters in the book reveal the changing ideas about how exercise contributes to health and the history of sport and body cultivation. In the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics, this book explores the diverse traditions of perfecting body and soul including early Chinese kickball games, Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica of 1543 and twentieth century Chinese exercises to do while brushing teeth. Illustrated throughout, this book is at NLS shelfmark OP6.212.44/2.