Jaromir Jeszke

In the paper the socially significant issue of the relationship between the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and the discourses about the disease was addressed, their infl uence on social attitudes towards pandemic and how in the spoken debates the patocenotic thinking (Mirko Grmek paradigm on relation between pathogens and pandemics and other dependencies e.g. social, economic, cultural) is presented. The analysis covered three main fields of discourses: 1) scientific-expert (reports of Polish Academy of Sciences, articles of polish medical society), 2) patient-expert (medical advice portals), 3) bottom-up and non-expert discourses (social media). The determinations were made on the errors in both public communication and expert discourse, functioning of technicized and medialized medical advice portals, emotional dimension of discourses in social media, as well as polarization of all those fields.

The article discusses possible inspirations for medical historians resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The author analyzes the role of the history of medicine in the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation is understood as an opportunity for changes in Polish medical historiography in its non-classical sense. The author also investigates the narrative structures, showing how, in the context of a pandemic, such fundamental metaphors as pathogenesis, salutogenesis or pathocenosis could be used. The attention is also given to public discourse, inspiring the historian of medicine to address such notions as breakthroughs in science, the process of validating new medical knowledge during a pandemic crisis, or anti-science. The concept of pathocenosis as a theoretical framework for the scientific and public ‘COVID-related’ discourse was analyzed as a case study. The author treats this reflection as an invitation to discuss the changes in Polish medical historiography in the face of a medical crisis.

The author considers to what extent “pathcenosis”, the concept of the Croatian- French historian of medicine Mirko Grmek (1924–2000), can provide a theoretical framework for contemporary and historical research on pandemics. This term denoted the set of diseases occurring in a given population at a given time and the relationships between them. The current COVID-19 pandemic is the impetus for contemporary research. Research on the scientifi c discourse in the reports of the COVID-19 Advisory Team at the President of the Polish Academy of Sciences allowed for the diagnosis of the theoretical usefulness of pathocoenosis. The area of these analyzes includes historical and medical interpretations, scientifi c myth and social myths about science, scientifi c consensus and the dissemination of science. These studies showed two dangerous tendencies: 1. discrepancies in the understanding of the strategy of fi ghting the pandemic between the multidisciplinary world of science and the state authorities; 2. slight social impact of scientifi c authorities on negationist social attitudes. Both trends have a real impact on the shaping of the pandemic situation. Prospects for the continuation of this research concern, among others searching for the possibility of modifying the concept of „pathocenosis” with the epidemiological consequences of globalization processes, the use of „pathocenosis” as a narrative structure in the historiography of medical sciences, the use of the concept of „pathocenosis” as an inspiration for theoretical approaches in studies on the history of social practices towards health and disease. The prospects for continuing the research carried out also take into account the presence of the socio-cultural context and the dynamics of changes in the pandemic in the scientific discourse. And also the great importance of the narrative of anti-science movements in Poland. All these factors infl uence the nature of the Polish pathocoenosis.

The main aim of the introductory paper is to present the scope and objectives of all essays presented  in the volume. We also examine the major theme of that issue of “Medycyna Nowożytna” and survey similarities and differences between early modern medicine, natural history and philosophy of nature in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The author, inspired by Stefan Zamecki’s autobiography: Życie wśród innych [Life among Others] and the life-path of this scholar, reflects on Polish historiography of science. These deliberations are not free from personal notes and associations referring to the figures of Polish historiography of science and the hero of the analysed book. Jaromir Jeszke uses here a flexible formula of Reflections on the margins of... From the theoretical perspective of the history of science, the author finds the following fields of Stefan Zamecki’s activity particularly inspiring: 1) his attempts to introduce – and consistently use in his works – the concept of ‘science’ and its subdisciplines, e.g. ‘chemistry’; 2) organising and conducting (together with Prof. Alina Motycka, philosopher from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences) a nationwide seminar: ‘Context of discovery in the history of the field of science’, which was held from the mid-1990s to 2002; 3) his scientific vision of the history of science together with its organizational location among sciences on science; 4) his analytical studies on a scientific journal with a century-old tradition: Nauka Polska. Jej Potrzeby, Organizacja i Rozwój [Polish Science. Needs, Organization and Development]. Stefan Zamecki appears to the author as a critical, skeptical and aloof scholar who walked into the history of science through studies on chemistry and philosophy. This experience has shaped his theoretical, ‘boundary’, not always accepted, but inspirational attitudes.

The author analyzes the relations between scientific societies and universities in Poland in the interwar period. The source material is the Yearbook “Polish Science. Its Needs, Organization, and Development” published by the Józef Mianowski Fund in the years 1918–1947. An investigation of the relationships between scientific societies and universities offers excellent opportunities for interpreting the scientific activity in the Second Polish Republic. The connections between scientific societies and universities involved the centers for propelling scientific thought, where university chairs or scientific society committees played the leading role. Sometimes the works of non-university experts were important. The analysis of the material collected in the “Polish Science” also points to many other professional organizations (associations of professors, associate professors, or assistants). Many universities had societies supporting them. Gaining social support for universities was extremely important at the time.

A historian (also of medicine) should accept the values and canons of the studied culture, including medical ones, as their own. As Florian Znaniecki pointed out in his works, they should be the researcher’s highest authority. This means that the researcher should deviate from evaluating the ideas and practices of the studied culture from their own perspective. The category of minimal cultural imputation developed by Wojciech Wrzosek shows that it is not an easy process. However, the application of the subjective-rational perspective to the interpretation has already become an obvious approach. An open and much less obvious problem is the role of the historian of science when they venture to make comparisons between past and present scientific cultures. By doing so, do they still remain a historian, or – by undertaking such comparisons and evaluations – do they abandon the role, assuming the position of, for example, methodologist? The author of the article outlines the possibilities of separating these roles, presenting the attitude of a ‘methodologist’ who searches in the past for the roots and theoretical justifications for contemporary paradigms of their discipline, using the latter to evaluate the past. However, the possibility of a non-evaluative dialogue between the cognizing culture and the cognized culture is also shown, where the former also includes the specialist knowledge of a contemporary researcher interested in the past of their discipline. The historiography of a given science appears here as a record of the self-knowledge of a given generation of researchers – as their self-reflection. As Jan Pomorski calls it, a researcher assuming such a role appears as homo metahistoricus in their field of study.