Z dziejów polityki sanitarnej pod pruskim zaborem 1772–1807

Abstrakt

From the History of the Sanitary Policy in the Prussian Partition Areas 1772–1807

The great modernisation of the health service and medicine at the turn of the nineteenth century was connected, on the one hand, with scientific innovations (Pasteur, Koch) and, on the other hand, with the development of the health service and the hospital system, together with the introduction of health insurance and funds (Germany, 1883). These transformations, however, had already been initiated on a more modest scale a century earlier. In the Prussian partition area (Western, Southern, and New Eastern Prussia) the sluggish reforms of the Stanisław August Poniatowski era were continued by the much more energetic Prussian authorities, whose experiences dated to the reign of Frederick William I and even the Great Elector. The age of epidemics signified the unconditional necessity of going beyond individual health care and embarking upon activity described as “the medical police”. The Prussians were engaged in modernisation rather than colonisation (i.e. exploitation), albeit a number of aspects proved unfavourable for the Poles, e.g. the imposition of the Prussian elites of power and intellectual life as a well as the medical administration apparatus. The Prussian authorities initiated the establishment of a system of obtaining information extensive demography and health (statistics of the reasons for death), which subsequently made it possible to undertake prevention. The prime cause of deaths was pox, and the range of the ensuing inoculation campaign (continued in the Duchy of Warsaw) was limited. Only the introduction in Prussia of mandatory inoculations after 1870 immediately liquidated mass-scale deaths due to this disease. Characteristics of the province indicated an extremely unsatisfactory health, sanitary, and hygiene situation. The reports contain numerous critical remarks about the health and mortality of Polish peasants, although prevailing problems in Prussia itself were identical, as was the structure of deaths. The authorities conducted a battle against folk medicine, charlatans, swindlers, and so-called unconventional medicine. For propaganda reasons the Prussians readily accentuated the Catholic nature of folk medicine (holy relics, pilgrimages, etc.), with the Prussian elites being markedly pro-Enlightenment. Quacks and female healers offered, however, the sole form of health care addressed to the peasants; physicians occurred only in the towns and treated the more prosperous members of the population, albeit those providing aid to the poor and official medical doctors also practised.