[Making offspring from act and substance. Experimenting with procreation and paternity in reproductive medicine and...

As an experimental medical practice artificial insemination in humans dates back to the end of the 18th century. Efforts intensified in the second half of the 19th century, when, especially in France, the number of reports in scientific publications increased and the topic became the subject of heated debates. I trace this emergence of reproductive medicine avant la lettre by reviewing the relevant medical publications. Hereby, I focus on how experiments in artificial insemination presupposed a new conceptualisation of procreation which detaches procreation from the doings of human actors by reducing it to the fusion of germ cells. This "biologisation" of procreation entailed a series of irritations with regard to the determination of "natural" paternity and the impact and relevance of the procreative act's nature. These irritations are dealt with in a novel that appears in Paris in 1884, entitled The Man-Maker. This novel thus attests to the cultural uncertainties that went along with the emergence of what laid the epistemological ground for the reproductive medicine to come.