In this paper I show how and why physicians and surgeons in eighteenth century Britain came to be seen, and to see themselves, as especially qualified to act as connoisseurs of art objects, antiquities, books and prints. Although several historians of art and science have shown that eighteenth century medics were much-involved in the world of connoisseurship, the roots and broader explanatory potential of this connection remain largely unexplored. To remedy this I explore the possibility that their medical knowledge was inflected by contemporary concerns about the effects of valuable, expensive things on the bodily and moral integrity of those who bought and used them. The paper tackles these broader issues by offering a reassessment of of the cultural and medical interests of powerful and influential London physicians and surgeons such as Richard Mead (1673-1754), George Cheyne (1671-2-1743) and William Cheselden (1688-1752). I focus on the works produced in their circle that expose the conceptual and practical links between ideals of medical behaviour and expertise, and those of connoisseurship - including works of art theory, such as Jonathan Richardson's essay on connoisseurship and pamphlet debates engaged in by the followers and opponents of Richard Mead. Although ostensibly concerned with questions of medical authority, matters of taste and connoisseurship were often invoked in order to attack or defend the medical authority of physicians and surgeons. The broad purpose of this paper is to show how the medical knowledge made by physicians and surgeons such as Mead and Cheselden was inflected by a number of discourses that seem (to modern eyes) to lie outside the proper field of medicine. Mead and his contemporaries invoked claims to good taste in art, antiquities and books in support of their medical authority because they saw the two activities as having much in common. Medics came to be seen as good judges of taste because of their special capacity to help mediate between the body, its senses and the things around it, including luxury food and luxury ‘things’ – both of which were equally capable of disordering the body and mind. These connections between ideas about the body and the consumption of material things can help us to reconsider the history of eighteenth century natural philosophy – a set of practices that relied explicitly on successfully using the body to derive useful inferences from a wide range of things outside and inside it.