[Between therapeutic nihilism and social hygiene: psychiatric care in French positivism]. / Entre el nihilismo terapeutico y la higiene social: la asistencia psiquiatrica en el positivismo frances.

This work attemps to reflect upon the founding theories of psychiatric care in France during the second half of the 19th. The relationship between the medical somaticism and therapeutical fatalism or positivist alienism has been evaluated using the contributions of the degeneratist psychiatricts as the research documentation. The study also covers the principle means of "reaction" to this alienism: the addressing of a certain form of "social hygiene" and the search for new treatments which would allow the alienist to be returned within the asylum walls.