'As her wide reading and close looking show, these artists' attempts to make the body legible hit at every juncture upon instability of the self, invisibility of the causes of action, and other sources of error and indeterminacy in scientific method and Enlightenment efforts to apply it to modern life. The results have not always been appreciated as art. To reveal them as vibrant applications of-and challenges to-the most iconoclastic science of their time is the task O'Rourke sets herself.' Andrei Pop, Review 19
1. De Loutherbourg's mesmeric effects; 2. Fuseli's physiognomic impressions; 3. Girodet's electric shocks; 4. Self evidence on the scaffold.