Patrick Zylberman

1 Le present article constitue la refonte d'une communication présentée par les auteurs lors du colloque ‘Malthus, hier et aujourd'hui’, qui s'est tenu à l'Unesco du 27 au 29 mai 1980, à Paris. sous I'égide de la Société de démographie historique. Les auteurs tiennent à remercier Madame Michelle Perrot de sa bienveillante hospitalité à leur égard. Notre reconnaissance va également au professeur Theodore Zeldin et au St Anthony's College qui, en accueillant généreusement les auteurs durant I'autonne 1981, leur ont permis d'approfondir leur matière dans ‘I'enfer tonique’ des bihliothèques oxoniennes

The dreadful nature of the epidemic of 1870 explains why smallpox, not cholera, played a central role in the French public health regulations. And yet, France went it alone on the matter. The rules required isolation for the contagious sick and mandatory notification of the disease almost everywhere, nevertheless France relied only on persuasion. True, the public health law of 1902 provided the State with new weapons. But would such a mandatory decree be sufficient to awake popular opinion? There was no resistance to the law, like in England or Germany. However, the new regulations took several decades to be enforced, if only because of the poor state of the sanitary administration. Smallpox vaccination was eventually implemented when the authorities discovered that proximity and easier accessibility to services and facilities are of primary importance for patients