On historians of medicine and research institutes of the fi rst half of the 1950s in the light of the report of the Ministry of Health

The article discusses the issue of the perception of the academic milieu of medical historians through the prism of the new post-war reality of the early 1950s. The author, based on the document – a report on a tour of scientifi c institutions by Dr. A. Smoluchowski – presents the then way of assessing medical historians, which to a large extent it depended on their individual views and attitude to the new Marxist ideology. In the end, the image of the community of Polish medical historians of the analyzed period turned out to be not the most interesting. It was supposed to be very confl icted, full of prejudices, blurring, disagreements, very attached to the pre-war way of practicing history, with little valuable achievements. How was it really? What could have been the cause of such an opinion? The author of the article tries to fi nd an answer to these and other questions.

The article discusses the issue of the perception of the academic milieu of medical historians through the prism of the new post-war reality of the early 1950s. The author, based on the document – a report on a tour of scientifi c institutions by Dr. A. Smoluchowski – presents the then way of assessing medical historians, which to a large extent it depended on their individual views and attitude to the new Marxist ideology. In the end, the image of the community of Polish medical historians of the analyzed period turned out to be not the most interesting. It was supposed to be very confl icted, full of prejudices, blurring, disagreements, very attached to the pre-war way of practicing history, with little valuable achievements. How was it really? What could have been the cause of such an opinion? The author of the article tries to fi nd an answer to these and other questions.