Magical Maladies - Disease and Medicine in Wizarding World

[wellingtongoose]

In the previous essays I have explained why the population structure of the wizarding world is much more similar to a pre-industrial country than modern muggle Britain.

High death rates in pre-industrialised countries reflect a large disease burden. Mostly this disease burden is due to infectious diseases that are endemic and also circulated

Comments

[woldy]

the pure-blood faction does spend a great deal of time lamenting the sheer numbers of muggle-born and half-bloods, which suggests that they do want to increase their numbers through reproduction. Does this follow? Purebloods certainly seem to wish that they were a higher proportion of the magical population, but I don't see any textual evidence for their desire to achieve this with more Purebloods as opposed to fewer muggle-born and half-bloods. Umbridge's claim in DH that muggle-borns have stolen magic from someone with magical parents provides a reason for the purebloods to want fewer muggle-borns without necessarily seeking a higher pureblood birth-rate.

[wellingtongoose]

Even Ron can see that the absolute pureblood population is not sufficiently large to prevent population collapse: "If we hadn't married Muggles we'd've died out" - Chamber of Secrets.

I am sure that eliminating muggle-borns from wizarding society is one of the pureblood faction's way of increasing their influence. However they do actually require an increase in absolute numbers in order to ensure that the purebloods continue to be a viable population without having to resort to interbreeding with non-purebloods.

[woldy]

Since LJ's spam filter jumped into action at my links, I'm reposting without them

[wellingtongoose]

The history of European aristocracy also shows us that despite primogeniture, producing an abundance of offspring both male and female was important for the noble families of Europe. Having just one heir and one spare was just the requisite minimum rather than the desired number