The Medicalization of Cousin Marriage in the 19th Century: Historical and Philosophical Approaches
La medicalización del matrimonio entre primos en el siglo XIX: enfoques históricos y filosóficos
Keywords:
Cousin marriage; medicalization; incest; 19th Century; politics; religion
Abstract
Although incest (i.e., sex between siblings or between parents and offspring) is universally abhorred (per the Westermarck effect), cousin marriage (consanguineous unions) is only rejected by some cultures. Although in some Western countries, and especially in the United States, there is extensive legislation against cousin marriage, this has not always been historically the case. The negative attitudes towards cousin marriage in the West actually have a long history, and non-medical factors (religion, politics, economics, demography) have played a role in this regard. However, by the mid-19th Century, the stand against cousin marriage was medicalized. Even though ultimately medical studies have proven that cousin marriage is not particularly dangerous, negative attitudes towards it persist. This article approaches this problem from a historical and philosophical perspective.
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References
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ARNHART, Larry. "The Incest Taboo as Darwinian Natural Right," in Arthur Wolf and William Durham, (eds.), Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo: The State of Knowledge at the Turn of the Century. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004. 190-217.
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MODEL, B & DARR, A. Science and society: genetic counselling and customary consanguineous marriage. National Review of Genetics, 2002, 3:225–229
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FOUCAULT, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. New York: Vintage. 1994
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DRESCHER, Jack. Out of DSM: Depathologizing Homosexuality. Behavioral Sciences. 2015, 5(4): 565–575.
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FREUD, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo. New York: Dover. 1998
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DURHAM, William. Coevolution: Genes, Culture, and Human Diversity. Stanford University Press, 1991, p. 310
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DIXSON, Alan. Primate Sexuality: Comparative Studies of the Prosimians, Monkeys, Apes, and Humans. Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 120.
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PAUL, Diane; SPENCER, Hamish. “It's Ok, We're Not Cousins by Blood”: The Cousin Marriage Controversy in Historical Perspective. Plos Biology 2008, 6(12).
THOMPSON, Wesley. The marriage of first cousins in Athenian society. Phoenix. 1967, Vol. 21, No. 4.
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BITTLES, Alan. Consanguinity in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 46.
MITCHELL, A.M. On the influence which consanguinity in the parentage exercise upon the offspring. Edinburg Medical Journal. Vol 10, 781-794. 1864.
MITCHELL, Sue. The Haunting Influence of Alexander Graham Bell. American Annals of the Deaf. 1971, Vol. 116, No. 3.
WINZER, Margaret. The History of Special Education: From Isolation to Integration. Gallaudet: Gallaudet University Press, 1993, p. 101.
BITTLES, Alan. The bases of western attitudes to consanguineous marriage. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology. 2003, 45: 135–138
BITTLES, Alan. Commentary: The background and outcomes of the first-cousin marriage controversy in Great Britain. International Journal of Epidemiology, 2009, 1.6
MCKINNON, Susan. Cousin marriage, hierarchy, and heredity: contestations over domestic and national body politics in 19th-century America. Journal of the British Academy, 7, 77
BEMISS, S. M. ‘Report on the Influence of Marriages of Consanguinity upon Offspring’, Transactions of the American Medical Association, 1858, 11: 319–425.
CALDWELL, C., Thoughts on Physical Education, and the True Mode of Improving the Condition of Man. Edinburgh: Adam and Black. 1836, p. 21
BROOKS, C. ‘Laws of Reproduction, Considered with Particular Reference to the Intermarriage of First-cousins’, Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1856, 236–46.
OTTENHEIMER, Martin. Lewis Henry Morgan and the Prohibition of Cousin Marriage in the United States. Journal of Family History. 1990, 15(3):325-34
MOSES, Daniel Noah. The Promise of Progress: The Life and Work of Lewis Henry Morgan. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 2009.
MORGAN, Lewis Henry. Ancient Society: Or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, Through Barbarism to Civilization. New York: CreateSpace. 2018.
WALKER, Alexander. Intermarriage: Or the Mode in Which, and the Causes Why, Beauty, Health, and Intellect Result from Certain Unions, and Deformity, Disease and Insanity from Others. Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston.
KUPER, Adam. Incest and influence: the private life of bourgeois England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009, p. 84
DARWIN, Charles. On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilized by Insects, and on the Good Effects of Intercrossing. London: John Murray, 1862, p. 360
GRAHAM, Peter. Jane Austen & Charles Darwin: Naturalists and Novelists. London: Ashgate. 2008, p. 128
DARWIN, Charles. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. London: John Murray, 1871 p. 403.
DARWIN, George H. “Marriages between first cousins in England and their effects,” Journal of the Statistical Society, 1875, 38, 155
DARWIN, Charles. Charles Darwin to G. Darwin, December 6, 1874, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2003.
PEARSON, Karl “Cousin marriages”. The British Medical Journal, 1908, p. 1395
PAUL, Diane & SPENCER, Hamish. Eugenics without Eugenists? Anglo-American Critiques of Cousin Marriage in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. In: Mueller-Wille, Staffan & Brandt, Christina (eds.). Heredity Explored: Between Public Domain and Experimental Science, 1850–1930. Boston: MIT Press. 2016.
PEARSON, Karl. The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924, p. 188.
SCOTT, John. A dictionary of sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2014, p. 492.
LAPIDOS, Juliet. West Virginia, Incest Virginia? Slate. June 3, 2008. Available at: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2008/06/how-did-west-virginia-get-a-reputation-for-inbreeding.html
SHAW, Alison. Drivers of Cousin Marriage among British Pakistanis. Human Heredity. 2014, 77(1-4): 26–36.
HUNT, Alan. The Great Masturbation Panic and the Discourses of Moral Regulation in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Britain. Journal of the History of Sexuality. 1998, Vol. 8, No. 4
SCHNEIDER, M.A. & HENDRIX, L. Olfactory sexual inhibition and the westermarck effect. Human Nature. 2000,11(1):65-91
ARNHART, Larry. "The Incest Taboo as Darwinian Natural Right," in Arthur Wolf and William Durham, (eds.), Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo: The State of Knowledge at the Turn of the Century. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004. 190-217.
HAIDT, Jonathan. The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 2001, 108, 814–834.
PAUL, Diane & SPENCER, Hamish. “It's Ok, We're Not Cousins by Blood”: The Cousin Marriage Controversy in Historical Perspective. PLoS Biology. 2008, 6(12): e320
MODEL, B & DARR, A. Science and society: genetic counselling and customary consanguineous marriage. National Review of Genetics, 2002, 3:225–229
FOUCAULT, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. New York: Vintage. 1988
FOUCAULT, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. New York: Vintage. 1994
ILLICH, Ivan. Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis, the Expropriation of Health. London: Marion Boyars. 2010
DRESCHER, Jack. Out of DSM: Depathologizing Homosexuality. Behavioral Sciences. 2015, 5(4): 565–575.
LEVI-STRAUSS, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. New York: Beacon. 2016.
FREUD, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo. New York: Dover. 1998
WESTERMARCK, Edward. The History of Human Marriage. New Delhi: Logos. 2007
DURHAM, William. Coevolution: Genes, Culture, and Human Diversity. Stanford University Press, 1991, p. 310
WOLF, Arthur. Incest Avoidance and the Incest Taboos. Stanford University Press, 2013, p. 48
DIXSON, Alan. Primate Sexuality: Comparative Studies of the Prosimians, Monkeys, Apes, and Humans. Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 120.
BATESON, Patrick. Inbreeding Avoidance and Incest Taboos. In: Wolf, Arthur (Ed.). Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo. Stanford University Press, 2005, p. 25-26.
FOX, Robin. The Tribal Imagination. Harvard University Press, 2011, p. 131.
BENETT R.L., MOTULSKY A.G & BITTLES, A. Genetic counseling and screening of consanguineous couples and their offspring: recommendations of the national society of genetic counselors. J Genet Couns; 2002, 11(2):97–119
PAUL, Diane; SPENCER, Hamish. “It's Ok, We're Not Cousins by Blood”: The Cousin Marriage Controversy in Historical Perspective. Plos Biology 2008, 6(12).
THOMPSON, Wesley. The marriage of first cousins in Athenian society. Phoenix. 1967, Vol. 21, No. 4.
AGER S.L. Familiarity breeds: incest and the Ptolemaic dynasty. Journal of Hellenistic Studies. 2005, 125:1–34.
GADOLPHIN, F.R.B. A note on the marriage of Claudius and Agrippina. Classical Philology. 1934, Vol. 29, No. 2
SHAW, Brent & SALLER, Richard. Close-kin marriage in Roman society? Man. 1984, Vol. 19, No. 3.
BEDE The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. London: Penguin, 2010, p. 81.
AUGUSTINE. The City of God against the Pagans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 665.
SCHULZ, Jonathan. Kin-networks and institutional development. SSRN. 2016 Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2877828
KING, P.D. Law and society in the Visigothic kingdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1972
GOODY, Jack. The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1983.
MAINE, Henry Sumner. Ancient Law. New York: Cosimo Classics. 2005
WATKIN, Thomas Glynn. An Historical Introduction to Modern Civil Law. New York: Routledge. 1999
MONGER, George. Marriage Customs of the World: An Encyclopedia of Dating Customs and Wedding Traditions. New York: ABC-Clio, 2013, p. 175.
SABEAN, D.W. TEUSCHER, S. Kinship in Europe: A new approach to long-term development. In: Sabean, D.W., S. Teuscher and J. Mathieu (eds). Kinship in Europe: Approaches to Long-Term Development (1300–1900). Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2007
NELSON, Claudia. Family ties in Victorian England. Westport: Praeger. 2007.
HAINES, M. ‘Fertility and Mortality in the United States’, 2019, Available at: http://eh.net/encyclopedia/fertility-and-mortality-in-the-united-states/
HALL, P. D., ‘Marital Selection and Business in Massachusetts Merchant Families, 1700–1900’, in M. Gordon (ed.), The American Family in Social-historical Perspective. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978, p. 101–14.
TROLLOPE, Anthony. The Small House at Allington. New York: Penguin. 1991
RUBEN, Robert. William Wilde's Census of the Deaf: A 19th Century Report as a Model for the 21st Century. Otology & Neurotology. 2010, Vol. 31, Issue 2.
BITTLES, Alan. Consanguinity in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 46.
MITCHELL, A.M. On the influence which consanguinity in the parentage exercise upon the offspring. Edinburg Medical Journal. Vol 10, 781-794. 1864.
MITCHELL, Sue. The Haunting Influence of Alexander Graham Bell. American Annals of the Deaf. 1971, Vol. 116, No. 3.
WINZER, Margaret. The History of Special Education: From Isolation to Integration. Gallaudet: Gallaudet University Press, 1993, p. 101.
BITTLES, Alan. The bases of western attitudes to consanguineous marriage. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology. 2003, 45: 135–138
BITTLES, Alan. Commentary: The background and outcomes of the first-cousin marriage controversy in Great Britain. International Journal of Epidemiology, 2009, 1.6
MCKINNON, Susan. Cousin marriage, hierarchy, and heredity: contestations over domestic and national body politics in 19th-century America. Journal of the British Academy, 7, 77
BEMISS, S. M. ‘Report on the Influence of Marriages of Consanguinity upon Offspring’, Transactions of the American Medical Association, 1858, 11: 319–425.
CALDWELL, C., Thoughts on Physical Education, and the True Mode of Improving the Condition of Man. Edinburgh: Adam and Black. 1836, p. 21
BROOKS, C. ‘Laws of Reproduction, Considered with Particular Reference to the Intermarriage of First-cousins’, Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1856, 236–46.
OTTENHEIMER, Martin. Lewis Henry Morgan and the Prohibition of Cousin Marriage in the United States. Journal of Family History. 1990, 15(3):325-34
MOSES, Daniel Noah. The Promise of Progress: The Life and Work of Lewis Henry Morgan. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 2009.
MORGAN, Lewis Henry. Ancient Society: Or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, Through Barbarism to Civilization. New York: CreateSpace. 2018.
WALKER, Alexander. Intermarriage: Or the Mode in Which, and the Causes Why, Beauty, Health, and Intellect Result from Certain Unions, and Deformity, Disease and Insanity from Others. Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston.
KUPER, Adam. Incest and influence: the private life of bourgeois England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009, p. 84
DARWIN, Charles. On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilized by Insects, and on the Good Effects of Intercrossing. London: John Murray, 1862, p. 360
GRAHAM, Peter. Jane Austen & Charles Darwin: Naturalists and Novelists. London: Ashgate. 2008, p. 128
DARWIN, Charles. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. London: John Murray, 1871 p. 403.
DARWIN, George H. “Marriages between first cousins in England and their effects,” Journal of the Statistical Society, 1875, 38, 155
DARWIN, Charles. Charles Darwin to G. Darwin, December 6, 1874, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2003.
PEARSON, Karl “Cousin marriages”. The British Medical Journal, 1908, p. 1395
PAUL, Diane & SPENCER, Hamish. Eugenics without Eugenists? Anglo-American Critiques of Cousin Marriage in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. In: Mueller-Wille, Staffan & Brandt, Christina (eds.). Heredity Explored: Between Public Domain and Experimental Science, 1850–1930. Boston: MIT Press. 2016.
PEARSON, Karl. The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924, p. 188.
SCOTT, John. A dictionary of sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2014, p. 492.
LAPIDOS, Juliet. West Virginia, Incest Virginia? Slate. June 3, 2008. Available at: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2008/06/how-did-west-virginia-get-a-reputation-for-inbreeding.html
SHAW, Alison. Drivers of Cousin Marriage among British Pakistanis. Human Heredity. 2014, 77(1-4): 26–36.
HUNT, Alan. The Great Masturbation Panic and the Discourses of Moral Regulation in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Britain. Journal of the History of Sexuality. 1998, Vol. 8, No. 4
Published
2021-04-23
How to Cite
Andrade, G., & Campo Redondo, M. S. (2021). The Medicalization of Cousin Marriage in the 19th Century: Historical and Philosophical Approaches: La medicalización del matrimonio entre primos en el siglo XIX: enfoques históricos y filosóficos. Revista De Filosofía, 38(97), 71-91. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4876412
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