Bożena Urbanek

The development of medical sciences in the 19th c. forced contemporary medical doctors to constantly improve their knowledge. The easiest way was to acquaint oneself with current problems presented in medical periodicals and book publications. Most of them were addressed to researchers. A deficit of such literature was observed in the further education for physicians practising in the provincial areas. In the partitioned areas, doctors relied on books written in German or French. This article presents the first Polish translation of the three-volume work titled Patologia i terapia szczegółowa (‘Pathology and Detailed Therapy’) and discusses the thematic focus of this publication. The three-volume edition initiated the process of developing Polish contributions in this field, heralded by the first entirely Polish textbook published in 1900 by Władysław Biegański titled Wykład o chorobach zaraźliwych, ostrych (‘Lecture on contagious, acute diseases’).

The article explores one of the diffi cult topics from the turbulent time of the birth of the II Polish Republic – migrations of refugees who were running away from various confl icts that engulfed the region in the beginning of 1920s. The author sets out to assess the sanitary and social conditions in the city until the year 1927, based on documentation from the Lithuanian State Modern Archive (Lietvas centrinis valstybes archywas).

Influenza, as a disease, is still relatively unknown to the general public, despite the fact that it has quite an extensive pedigree, both in terms of etymology – the history of the term itself – as well as the period when it first became recognizable as a specific type of ailment. The following analysis attempts to uncover the regularities connected with learning about this disease, which has been known to plague mankind since ancient times. Another interesting aspect – besides reaching the reason for the phrasing used – is the question of the naming convention, which developed in Europe, one could say, along with the disease itself, which in turn was often known to take the form of an epidemic or even escalating to a pandemic. This analysis is based on the first Polish medical textbooks describing infectious diseases, which started being published in the Congress Kingdom of Poland in 1870s. Moreover, it should be added that initially those books were published on the basis of foreign literature and were passed on to the Polish public through translations. However, from the beginning of the 20th century, textbooks by native authors, the first national specialists in this field, started being written. The last position used for the purposes of the above analysis is a publication entitled doctors), edited by Leon Karwacki and Feliks Malinowski, published in Warsaw in 3 volumes, two years before the outbreak of the Second World War, in the year 1937.

Jan Bohdan Gliński, Słownik biograficzny lekarzy i farmaceutów  ofiar drugiej wojny światowej, t. 6, Wydawnictwo Dwa Światy, Warszawa 2018, ss. 233 (rec. Bożena Urbanek)

Maria J. Turos, Dominique Jean Larrey (1766–1842) chirurg  wielkiej armii, Wydawnictwo Napoleon V, Oświęcim 2017, ss. 295 (rec. Bożena Urbanek)

The article concerns the circumstances of the creation of neurology and psychiatry faculties at the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius, established in 1919. It presents the difficult working conditions of the teaching faculties created after the Partitions period – the strive for the correct equipment, localization and staff. It examines the changes in those two faculties in the period of 15 years, until they were merged into one administrative structure in 1934. It also shows the scientific and didactic efforts of those faculties, underlining the independence of the teaching from the usual European approaches to neurology and psychiatry. The article is based on the analysis if the sources taken from the Vilnius archives.

Hospital care in Vilnius has a long tradition, going back more than 300 years. Some people claim that one of the fi rst care and treatment facilities in Central and Eastern Europe was located in Vilnius. That institution was the local St. Jacob’s hospital, which after more than 90 years of operation, i.e. in 1799, received that name. The same hospital continued operation until the year 2005, when a decision was made to fi nally close it down. By mid 19th century, due to increasing demands in hospital care, as well as increased social needs, many other similar institutions were soon established, among them the “Sawicz” hospital and the Jewish hospital, which continued to operate and grow into the times of the Second Polish Republic. Władysław Zahorski wrote about the origins of the fi rst hospitals in Vilnius already in the interwar period, however his focus was on the early days of local treatment facilities. The article aims to describe the history of the oldest municipal hospitals in Polish Vilnius in the interwar period, up until the year 1939. The foundation of the article is established by using historic archives of the City Hall that are currently located in the Lithuanian Central State Archives (Lietuvos Centrinis Valstybes Archyvas) and in the Special Collection of the General Medical Library, together with old calendars, periodicals, and studies on the subject.

The article aims to show the development of pediatrics in Vilnius (Wilno) in the Borderlands of the Second Polish Republic in the interwar period. The text presents the beginnings of the organizational, scientific and staffing process, and it employs the sources from the Lithuanian Central State Archives (Lietuvos centrinis valstybės archyvas), as well as address lists and medical journals from the period.