ABSTRACT
In the early 19th century, heredity and infection provided alteratives explanations for diseases such as tuberculosis and syphilis, and thus spurred conflict in the field of public health and hygiene. Meanwhile, the old notion of ‘heredity-degeneration’ was evoling into a new concept of ‘heredity-evolution’. 2 Slowly too, the old hereditarian ideas were giving way to genetics, or to what we might call medicalized eugenics. But are the notions of heredity and infection actually opposed to each other? The more knowledge we have of genetics, the more we must inquire into the meaning of this opposition inherited from the past. Herein, I would like to preent a special chapter out of the history of French hygiène, a concept that evolved into the idea of social medicine. Attention will thus be focused on the state and family as providers of health care within the ‘mixed economy’ of public health (to borrow Jane Lewis' phrase). 3
