Great Nation in Decline

Sean M. Quinlan is Associate Professor of History at the University of Idaho, USA.

• Contents: Introduction: degeneration, regeneration, and health panics in modern France; A medical diagnosis of social crisis, c.1750-1770; Depopulation and institutional response, c 1776-1789; Colonial bodies and hygiene in the Antilles, c. 1750-1794; Doctors, regeneration and the revolutionary crucible, 1789-1804; Uncertain territory and fragmented agendas, 1804-1830; From cholera to degeneration, c. 1832-1852; Conclusion: degeneration and regeneration after 1850; Bibliography of printed sources; Index.

’Quinlan impressively incorporates a wide range of printed sources for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to tell a sweeping story of medicine and politics. ... Overall, this is an excellent book that successfully accomplishes Quinlan’s objective of considering ’how doctors contributed to a much broader public discussion about physical degeneracy and depopulation in France between roughly 1750 and 1850’... The Great Nation in Decline is a lively and engaging contribution to the historiographies of gender, reproduction, public health and modern France.’ Social History of Medicine ’... whether readers accept or reject the larger claims of The Great Nation in Decline, they can be grateful to Quinlan not just for the lucid and perceptive readings of the individual texts but also for injecting new life into discussions of France’s contributions to the development of modern public health.’ ISIS ’This well written and thoroughly researched book - it contains a wealth of archival documentation - should appeal to anyone interested in the history of modern medicine.’ H-France