Quality and Quantity: The Quest for Biological Regeneration in Twentieth-Century France

by William H. Schneider

• ISBN13: 9780521524612
• ISBN10: 052152461X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-08-08
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book 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

Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(10)
Degeneration and regeneration	11	(44)
From puericulture to eugenics	55	(29)
The French Eugenics Society up to 1920	84	(32)
Postwar eugenics and social hygiene	116	(30)
The campaign for a premarital examination law	146	(24)
French eugenics in the 1930s	170	(38)
Eugenics, race, and blood	208	(22)
Race and immigration	230	(26)
Vichy and eugenics	256	(27)
Conclusion	283	(10)
Notes	293	(60)
Selected bibliography	353	(30)
Index	383