摘要：In the Early Modern period, the new mechanical philosophy profoundly influenced the way people imagined their bodies. Descartes' striking description, in his Traite de l'homme , of the body as 'an earthen machine' echoes around the contemporary literature, lingering into the twenty-first century. Over the past fifty years, and provoked by the ubiquitous presence of the computer, cyborg literature has revisited the idea of the machine-man and considered its sinister ramifications. It is not surprising then that so-called mechanical bodies have been a key discussion point in recent years for inter-disciplinary scholars of the arts and sciences, and that the research of early modern scholars has been prominent in cross-period discussions. At the last conference run by the Association for the Medical Humanities, in September 2006, Margaret Healy delivered a plenary on 'Writing, Illness, and Contemplating Machine Bodies Prior to Descartes' in which she discussed Montaigne's fascination with water technology in relation to his trouble with the stone. A year later, at the conference held by the Research Centre for Literature, Arts and Science at the University of Glamorgan, Jonathan Sawday gave a stimulating lecture on anti- machines, with special reference to John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester's thoughts about his body as a malfunctioning sex-machine
