Malthus, Medicine, and Morality: "Malthusianism" after 1798. Clio Medica (review)

Abstract

Many social historians of medicine would emphasize that they regard medical practitioners as part of larger systems of charity and care in the culture they study. It is ironic, therefore, that Christopher Hamlin and Kathleen Gallagher-Kamper can observe that "medical history has found little room for Thomas Malthus" (p. 115). This useful collection, deriving from a symposium held at the Wellcome Institute in London two hundred years after the 1798 publication of Malthus's Essay on Population, shows how far his work and reputation are as much part of the history of medicine as of the histories of political economy, demography, science, and environmentalism. The volume's contents can be divided into three broad categories. Some essays deal with the development of Malthus's thought and writings, others focus on British responses to his oeuvre in the first half of the nineteenth century, and a third group discusses aspects of the history of birth control.