Race et médecine : Une vieille histoire

Abstract

Cet article propose de prendre un peu de distance vis-à-vis du retour actuel de la notion de « race » dans le champ biomédical, en examinant le lien intime qui existe entre pensée médicale et problématique de la race lors de l’émergence du concept naturaliste de « race » aux XVIIIe-XIXe siècles. Il montre comment l’analogie avec les pathologies a été mobilisée alors par les naturalistes pour penser la « race » comme altération d’une identité d’origine, à travers, d’une part, le modèle des tempéraments maladifs, d’autre part celui des maladies héréditaires.

In this article, I argue that the problematic of “race and medicine”, which has been the object of many recent debates, has a long history that it may be useful to understand better. I show more specifically that, from the very first uses of the concept of “race” in natural history during the XVIIIth century, medical concepts and analogies served as important models. These medical models were especially useful to analyze “races” as alterations from an original identity. Different analogies are studied here. 1. The analogy between races’ peculiar temperaments and morbid alterations of human constitution. 2. The analogy between the transmission of the alterations along generations and hereditary diseases. In this second analogy, I differentiate between two models: the degeneration of the human type and the transmission of a molecular alteration of one character.