"All titles in the Clio Medica series (from 1999 onwards) are available to download from the CatchWord website: http://www.catchword.co.uk ."--Title page verso.

Based on a symposium held March 1998 at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Malthusian Selections / Brian Dolan -- Malthus’s Political Economy of Health: The Critique of Scandinavia in the Essay on Population / Brian Dolan -- Boys to Men: Moral Restraint at Haileybury College / Timothy L. Alborn -- The Malthusian Moment / Roy Porter -- ‘Malthus on Man – In Animals no Moral Restraint’ / Robert M. Young -- Malthus Among the Theologians / Brian Young -- Malthus and the Doctors: Political Economy,Medicine, and the State in England, Ireland, and Scotland, 1800-1840 / Christopher Hamlin and Kathleen Gallagher-Kamper -- Malthusian Mutations: The changing politics and moral meanings of birth control in Britain / Lesley A. Hall -- Reproduction and Revolution: Paul Robin and Neo-Malthusianism in France / Angus McLaren -- Biology and Sociology of Fertility. Reactions to the Malthusian Threat, 1798–1933. / Antonello La Vergata.

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Thomas Robert Malthus's reputation has lately been rehabilitated in the fields of social biology, demography, environmentalism, and economics. In the midst of this current interest and with the chance to mark the occasion of the bicentenary of the first edition of the Essay on Population (1798), the contributors to this volume take this timely opportunity to examine the historical conditions in which Malthus constructed his theory, and in which the concept of a ‘Malthusian' and ‘Neo-Malthusian' philosophy first emerged. The essays redress the balance between Malthus's original argument, the immediate responses to Malthus by medics and theologians in Britain and on the Continent, and some of the ways that his ideas were later attacked, appropriated, or misrepresented. Included here are essays that not only re-evaluate the development of Malthus's theory, but also offer critical perspectives on the generation of the ‘Malthusian league' and debates about birth control in Britain and on the Continent, and Malthus's influence on the emergence of social science and Darwinian evolutionary biology.