Malthus, Medicine and Morality: Malthusianism after 1798. Edited by Brian Dolan. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 2000. Pp. 232. $53.00

Malthus, Medicine and Morality is a collection of essays marking the bicentenary of the publication of Thomas Robert Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. They vary considerably in subject matter, as is inevitable given the nature of Malthus's work. The Essay managed to be both a scientific investigation into demographic history and an intervention into the political debates on the French Revolution. It built its argument on a particular theory of mind and human behavior. Because it linked wealth and poverty to population, the Essay became part of the political economy of the time. Malthus gave his name, though not his imprimatur, to the birth-control movement in the nineteenth century. Not only were the Essay's arguments widely and approvingly quoted at the time, they also provoked a resolutely anti-Malthusian current of thought. Though the Essay's argument is apparently simple, this obscures a wealth of ambiguity and dense argumentation in the text, made more so by the constant revisions Malthus carried out for subsequent editions. What this collection does is to begin to deconstruct Malthus and unravel all the various elements that make up the phenomenon of “Malthusianism.”