Defeated Flesh: Welfare, Warfare and the Making of Modern France [Medicine, Society, and the Birth of Modern France]. by Taithe, Bertrand - 1999

Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. 1st ed.. Hardback octavo, dustjacket, very good condition (in very good dustjacket), cover edges jacket marginally faded. 292 pp. A compelling study of the French defeat of 1870 and the socialist uprising of the Commune of Paris - a crucial era in the making of modern France. By examining the history of the body and medicine, Taithe shows how the French mobilized for the war effort, and how their ultimate defeat had devastating cultural and social consequences that led to the "fin de siecle spirit" (the feeling that society was in crisis and needed radical change).