Pro-alienism, anti-alienism and the medical profession in late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain

The chapters in this book have been broadly concerned with the interaction between racial ideas, medicine and science. They have highlighted the different ways in which racial thinking influenced the development of medicine and science, and the ways in which medicine and science gave added ‘legitimacy’ to racial stereotypes. The current chapter seeks to add to this discussion by examining the medical profession’s response to the immigration of Eastern European Jews into Britain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In contrast to some earlier accounts, this chapter seeks to give equal weight to both pro-alien and anti-alien discourses. ¹