Quality and quantity : the quest for biological regeneration in twentieth-century France

Bibliographic Information

Quality and quantity : the quest for biological regeneration in twentieth-century France

William H. Schneider

(Cambridge history of medicine / editors, Charles Webster and Charles Rosenberg)

Cambridge University Press, 1990

Available at  / 13 libraries

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Note

Bibliography: p. [353]-381

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This book, first published in 1991, examines in detail how eugenics in early twentieth-century France provided a broad cover for a variety of reform movements that attempted to bring about the biological regeneration of the French population. Like several other societies during this period, France showed a growing interest in natalist, neo-Larmarckian, social hygiene, racist, and other biologically based movements as a response to the perception that French society was in a state of decline and degeneration. William Schneider's study provides a fascinating account of attempts to apply new discoveries in biology and medicine toward the improvement in the inherited biological quality of the population through such measures as birth control, premarital examinations, sterilization, and immigration restriction. It is the first attempt to set forth the major components of French eugenics both for comparison with other countries and to show the interaction of the various movements that comprised it.

Table of Contents

  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Degeneration and regeneration
  • 3. From puericulture to eugenics
  • 4. The French eugenics society to 1920
  • 5. Postwar eugenics and social hygiene
  • 6. The campaign for a premarital exam
  • 7. French eugenics in the thirties
  • 8. Eugenics, race and blood
  • 9. Race and immigration
  • 10. Vichy and after
  • 11. Conclusion
  • Notes.

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