Inheriting Vice, Acquiring Virtue

This essay examines the medical debates over hereditary disease and moral hygiene in France between 1748 and 1790. During this time, which was marked by two formal academic exchanges about pathological inheritance, doctors critically studied the existence of hereditary diseases—including syphilis, arthritis, phthisis, scrofula, rickets, gout, stones, epilepsy, and insanity—and the problems that heredity might pose for curing and preventing these diseases. Amid public debate, doctors first treated heredity with formal skepticism and then embraced the idea. Their changing attitudes stemmed less from epistemological or cognitive reasons than from new cultural beliefs about gender, domesticity, and demographic policy. Fearing moral degeneracy and demographic decline, they argued that a number of social pathologies were truly hereditary and that these diseases spread within the family itself. These beliefs were seemingly confirmed by new clinical studies on tuberculosis. Though doctors conceded that hereditary diseases might limit Enlightenment hopes to perfect society, they also suggested that sexual hygiene and physical education could cure hereditary degeneracy and transcend genealogy and descent. Consequently, they stressed that physical regeneration was a dynamic process, one that stretched from the conjugal bed to weaning and beyond. Rather than accepting the accidents of birth, physicians believed that their patients could self-consciously overcome inherited defects and thus regenerate themselves and even all of society itself. Heredity thus gave doctors an idiom with which to diagnose a felt social crisis and to prescribe appropriate hygienic responses

Disease · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Germ theory of disease · Heredity · Hippocratic Oath · Pathology · Psychiatry · Skepticism · Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology

• Education, Mutualism, and Medical Consumers in Third Republic France, 1882-1914

  C Lacy•Social History of Medicine•2008

  Añadir item

• All Production Is Reproduction

  Elisabeth Wallmann•History of Political Economy•2022

  Añadir item

• The Physical and the Moral

  Elizabeth A Williams•The Physical and the Moral•2002

  Añadir item

• The double face of Janus and other essays in the history of medicine

  Owsei Temkin•The double face of Janus and…•1977

  Añadir item

• Explaining epidemics and other studies in the history of medicine

  Charles E Rosenberg•Explaining Epidemics•1992

  Añadir item

• Imperial Eyes

  Mary Louise Pratt•Imperial Eyes•1992

  Añadir item

• The Limits of Reform in the Enlightenment

  Charles R Bailey, Harvy Chisick•The American Historical Review•1982

  Añadir item

• Trembley's Polyp, La Mettrie, and Eighteenth-Century French Materialism

  Aram Vartanian•Journal of the History of Ideas•1950

  Añadir item

• 'Tis Nature's Fault

  Open Access•Robert Purks Maccubbin•'Tis Nature's Fault•1988

  Añadir item

• Eroticism and the Body Politic

  Lynn Hunt•Eroticism and the body politic•1990

  Añadir item

• The Medical World of Early Modern France

  Winfried Schleiner•Sixteenth Century Journal•1999

  Añadir item

• Les médecins de l'Ouest au XIXe siècle

  J Leonard•Annales de Démographie Historique•1979

  Añadir item

• The Twilight of the Goddesses

  Carol Blum, Madelyn Gutwirth•Eighteenth-Century Studies•1993

  Añadir item

• Medicine as a Key to Defining Enlightenment Issues

  Kathleen Wellman•Studies in eighteenth century…•1988

  Añadir item

• Conceiving the New World Order

  Betsy Hartmann, Ginsburg Rapp et al.•Conceiving the New World Order•1996

  Añadir item

• Forging heredity

  Open Access•Carlos Lopez-Beltran•Studies in History and Philosophy…•1994

  Añadir item

• La mort dans la litterature et la pensee francaises au siecle des lumieres

  H T MASON, Robert Favre•Modern Language Notes•1980

  Añadir item

• Mythologies de l'heredite au XIXe siecle

  Maryline Lukacher, Jean Borie•Modern Language Notes•1982

  Añadir item

• La callipédie, ou l'art d'avoir de beaux enfants

  Open Access•Jean-Louis Fischer•Dix-huitième siècle•1991

  Añadir item

• Hereditary or Acquired Disease? Early Nineteenth Century Debates on the Cause of Infantile Scrofula and Tuberculosis

  Elizabeth Lomax•Journal of the History of…•1977

  Añadir item

• Infantile Syphilis as an Example of Nineteenth Century Belief in the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics

  Elizabeth Lomax•Journal of the History of…•1979

  Añadir item

• Rudolf Virchow and the Pathologist's Criteria for the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics

  Frederick B Churchill•Journal of the History of…•1976

  Añadir item

• The Disease of the Self

  Cara Lawlor, Clark Lawlor et al.•Bulletin of the history of medicine•2000

  Añadir item

• Childhood, Identity and Human Science in the Enlightenment

  Adriana S Benzaquén•History Workshop Journal•2004

  Añadir item

• Le corps du délit

  Jean-Louis Durand, J L Durand•Communications•1977

  Añadir item

• Strength in Numbers

  Open Access•Loïc Charles, Carol Blum•Population•2003

  Añadir item

• From Heredity Theory to Vererbung

  Frederick B Churchill•Isis•1987

  Añadir item

• Policing the Poor in Eighteenth-Century France

  Thomas Brennan, Thomas E Brennan et al.•The Journal of Interdisciplinary…•1990

  Añadir item

• The Charitable Imperative

  J C Riley, Colin Jones•The Economic History Review•1990

  Añadir item