The Great Nation In Decline (the History Of Medicine In Context)
by Sean M. Quinlan /
2007 / English / PDF
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This book studies how doctors responded to - and helped shape -
deep-seated fears about nervous degeneracy and population decline
in France between 1750 and 1850. It uncovers a rich and far-ranging
medical debate in which four generations of hygiene activists used
biomedical science to transform the self, sexuality and community
in order to regenerate a sick and decaying nation; a programme
doctors labelled 'physical and moral hygiene'. Moreover, it is
shown how doctors imparted biomedical ideas and language that
allowed lay people to make sense of often bewildering
socio-political changes, thereby giving them a sense of agency and
control over these events. Combining a chronological and thematic
approach, the six chapters in this book trace how doctors began
their medical crusade during the middle of the Enlightenment, how
this activism flowered during the French Revolution, and how they
then revised their views during the period of post-revolutionary
reaction. The study concludes by arguing that medicine acquired an
unprecedented political, social and cultural position in French
society, with doctors becoming the primary spokesmen for bourgeois
values, and thus helped to define the new world that emerged from
the post-revolutionary period.
This book studies how doctors responded to - and helped shape -
deep-seated fears about nervous degeneracy and population decline
in France between 1750 and 1850. It uncovers a rich and far-ranging
medical debate in which four generations of hygiene activists used
biomedical science to transform the self, sexuality and community
in order to regenerate a sick and decaying nation; a programme
doctors labelled 'physical and moral hygiene'. Moreover, it is
shown how doctors imparted biomedical ideas and language that
allowed lay people to make sense of often bewildering
socio-political changes, thereby giving them a sense of agency and
control over these events. Combining a chronological and thematic
approach, the six chapters in this book trace how doctors began
their medical crusade during the middle of the Enlightenment, how
this activism flowered during the French Revolution, and how they
then revised their views during the period of post-revolutionary
reaction. The study concludes by arguing that medicine acquired an
unprecedented political, social and cultural position in French
society, with doctors becoming the primary spokesmen for bourgeois
values, and thus helped to define the new world that emerged from
the post-revolutionary period.