with little social consequence, but later became more pessimistic about the effects of degeneration on the general population; maudsley also warned against the use of the term "degeneration" in a vague and indiscriminate way. anxieties in britain about the perils of degeneration found legislative expression in the mental deficiency act 1913 which gained strong support from winston churchill, then a senior member of the liberal government. in the fin-de-siècle period, max nordau scored an unexpected success with his bestselling degeneration (1892). sigmund freud met nordau in 1885 while he was studying in paris and was notably unimpressed by him and hostile to the degeneration concept. degeneration fell from popular and fashionable favor around the time of the first world war, although some of its preoccupations persisted in the writings of the eugenicists and social darwinists (for example, r. austin freeman; anthony ludovici; rolf gardiner; and see also dennis wheatley's letter to posterity). oswald spengler's the decline of the west (1919) captured something of the degenerationist spirit in the aftermath of the war. psychology and emil kraepelin degeneration theory is, at its heart, a way of thinking, and something that is taught, not innate. a major influence on the theory was emil kraepelin, lining up degeneration theory with his psychiatry practice. the central idea of this concept was that in “degenerative” illness, there is a steady decline in mental functioning and social adaptation from one generation to the other. for example, there might be an intergenerational development from nervous character to major depressive disorder, to overt psychotic illness and, finally, to severe and chronic cognitive impairment, something akin to dementia. this theory was advanced decades before the rediscovery of mendelian genetics and their application to medicine in general and to psychiatry in particular. kraepelin and his colleagues mostly derived from degeneration theory broadly. he rarely made a specific references to the theory of degeneration, and his attitude towards degeneration theory was not straightforward. positive, but more ambivalent. the concept of disease, especially chronic mental disease fit very well into this framework insofar these phenomena were regarded as signs of an evolution in the wrong direction, as a degenerative process which diverts from the usual path of nature. however, he remained skeptical of over-simplistic versions of this concept: while commenting approvingly on the basic ideas of cesare lombroso's "criminal anthropology", he did not accept the popular idea of overt "stigmata of degeneration", by which individual persons could be identified as being "degenerated" simply by their physical appearance. while kraepelin and his colleagues may not have focused on this, it did not stop others from advancing the converse idea. an early application of this theory was the mental deficiency act supported by winston churchill in 1913. this entailed placing those deemed “idiots” into separate colonies, and included those who showed sign of a “degeneration”. while this did apply to those with mental disorders of a psychiatric nature, the execution was not always in the same vein, as some of the language was used to the those “morally weak”, or deemed “idiots”. the belief in the existence of degeneration helped foster a sense that a sense of negative energy was inexplicable and was there to find sources of “rot” in society. this forwarded the notion the idea that society was structured in a way that produced regression, an outcome of the “darker side of progress”. those who had developed the label of "degenerate" as a means of qualifying difference in a negative manner could use the idea that this “darker side of progress” was inevitable by having the idea society could “rot". considerations to the pervasiveness an allegedly superior condition were, during the nineteenth century, frighteningly reinforced the language and habits of destructive thinking. the "dark side" of progress the idea of progress was at once a social, political and scientific theory. the theory of evolution, as described in darwin's the origin of species, provided for many social theorists the necessary scientific foundation for the idea of social and political progress. the terms evolution and progress were in fact often used interchangeably in the 19th century. the rapid industrial, political and economic progress in 19th-century europe and north america was, however, paralleled by a sustained discussion about increasing rates of crime, insanity, vagrancy, prostitution, and so forth. confronted with this apparent paradox, evolutionary scientists, criminal anthropologists and psychiatrists postulated that civilization and scientific progress could be a cause of physical and social pathology as much as a defense against it. this led to the emergence of a general theory of degeneration, never reduced to a concrete, simple theory or axiom. instead, the concept of degeneration was produced and refined within and between several discourses, including the human sciences, the natural sciences, fictional narratives and socio-political commentaries. a broad outline of the theory, however, can be formulated, and it runs as follows. according to the theory of degeneration, a host of individual and social pathologies in a finite network of diseases, disorders and moral habits could be explained by a biologically based affliction. the primary symptoms of the affliction were thought to be a weakening of the vital forces and will power of its victim. in this way, a wide range of social and medical deviations, including crime, violence, alcoholism, prostitution, gambling, and pornography, could be explained by reference to a biological defect within the individual. the theory of degeneration was therefore predicated on evolutionary theory. the forces of degeneration opposed those of evolution, and those afflicted with degeneration were thought to represent a return to an earlier evolutionary stage. this can be seen socially when mixed race marriages started becoming more frequent as the 19th century progressed. such mixed marriages, all but unthinkable in 1848 but now on the rise among indo-european and even full-blood european women with native men, were attributed to the increasing impoverishment and declining welfare of these women on the one hand an "intellectual and social development" among certain classes of native the other. the issue, however, was rarely addressed since the gender hierarchy of the argument was contingent on assuming those who made such conjugal choices were neither well-bred nor deserved european standing. as more people began to mix with a race or people that was seen as lesser, degeneration theory became intertwined with development in a racial and colonial sense and more of these examples became common. the poetics of degeneration was a poetics of social crisis. in the last decades of the century; victorian social planners drew deeply on social darwinism and the idea of degeneration to figure the social crises erupting relentlessly in the cities and colonies. heightened debates converged with domestic and colonial social reform, cementing an offensive of a somewhat different order. it targeted the "dangerous" in paupered residuum and the growing population impoverished indo-europeans, the majority of whom were of mixed but legally classified as european. the world, being more globalized than ever before, continued to have more “crises” similar to these had by the leading classes, deterring the other as the enemy or downfall of society. by the end of the 1870s, britain was foundering in severe depression, and throughout the 1880s class tensions, the suffragette movement, a socialist revival, swelling poverty and the dearth of housing and jobs fed deepening middle class fears. selected quotes "the word degenerate, when applied to a people, means that the people no longer has the same intrinsic value as it had before, because it has no longer the same blood in its veins, continual adulterations having gradually affected the quality of that blood....in fact, the man of a decadent time, the degenerate man properly so-called, is a different being from the racial point of view, from the heroes of the great ages....i think i am right in concluding that the human race in all its branches has a secret repulsion from the crossing of blood...." arthur de gobineau (1855) essay on the inequality of the human races. "when under any kind of noxious influence an organism becomes debilitated, its successors will not resemble the healthy, normal type of the species, with capacities for development, but will form a new sub-species, which, like all others, possesses the capacity of transmitting to its offspring, in a continuously increasing degree, its peculiarities, these being morbid deviations from the normal form - gaps in development, malformations and infirmities..." bénédict morel (1857) treatise on degeneration. "...any new set of conditions which renders a species' food and safety very easily obtained, seems to lead to degeneration...." ray lankester (1880) degeneration: a chapter in darwinism. "we stand now in the midst of a severe mental epidemic; of a sort of black death of degeneration and hysteria, and it is natural that we should ask anxiously on all sides: 'what is to come next ?' " max nordau (1892) degeneration. "it has become the fashion to regard any symptom which is not obviously due to trauma or infection as a sign of degeneracy....this being so, it may well be asked whether an attribution of "degeneracy" is of any value, or adds anything to our knowledge..." sigmund freud (1905) three essays on the theory of sexuality. development of the degeneration concept the earliest uses of the term degeneration can be found in the writings of blumenbach and buffon at the end of the 18th century, when these early writers on natural history considered scientific approaches to the human species. with the taxonomic mind-set of natural historians, they drew attention to the different ethnic groupings of mankind, and raised general enquiries about their relationships, with the idea that racial groupings could be explained by environmental effects on a common ancestral stock. this pre-darwinian belief in the heritability of acquired characteristics does not accord with modern genetics. an alternative view of the multiple origins of different racial groups, called "polygenic theories", was also rejected by charles darwin, who favored explanations in terms of differential geographic migrations from a single, probably african, population. the theory of degeneration found its first detailed presentation in the writings of bénédict morel (1809–1873), especially in his traité des dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l'espèce humaine (treatise on degeneration of the human species) (1857). this book was published two years before darwin's origin of species. morel was a highly regarded psychiatrist, the very successful superintendent of the rouen asylum for almost twenty years and a fastidious recorder of the family histories of his variously disabled patients. through the details of these family histories, morel discerned an hereditary line of defective parents infected by pollutants and stimulants; a second generation liable to epilepsy, neurasthenia, sexual deviations and hysteria; a third generation prone to insanity; and a final generation doomed to congenital idiocy and sterility. in 1857, morel proposed a theory of hereditary degeneracy, bringing together environmental and hereditary elements in an uncompromisingly pre-darwinian mix. morel's contribution was further developed by valentin magnan (1835–1916), who stressed the role of alcohol—particularly absinthe—in the generation of psychiatric disorders. morel's ideas were greatly extended by the italian medical scientist cesare lombroso (1835–1909) whose work was defended and translated into english by havelock ellis. in his l'uomo delinquente (1876), lombroso outlined a comprehensive natural history of the socially deviant person and detailed the stigmata of the person who was born to be criminally insane. these included a low, sloping forehead, hard and shifty eyes, large, handle-shaped ears, a flattened or upturned nose, a forward projection of the jaw, irregular teeth, prehensile toes and feet, long simian arms and a scanty beard and baldness. lombroso also listed the features of the degenerate mentality, supposedly released by the disinhibition of the primitive neurological centres. these included apathy, the loss of moral sense, a tendency to impulsiveness or self-doubt, an unevenness of mental qualities such as unusual memory or aesthetic abilities, a tendency to mutism or to verbosity, excessive originality, preoccupation with the self, mystical interpretations placed on simple facts or perceptions, the abuse of symbolic meanings and the magical use of words, or mantras. lombroso, with his concept of atavistic retrogression, suggested an evolutionary reversion, complementing hereditary degeneracy, and his work in the medical examination of criminals in turin resulted in his theory of criminal anthropology—a constitutional notion of abnormal personality that was not actually supported by his own scientific investigations. in his later life, lombroso developed