The reclamation of the Pinsk marshes, as envisaged in interwar Poland, was one of the most ambitious national investment projects of the era. The plan was closely linked with the concept of a trans-European waterway running through Polesie, that was also being contemplated around that time. The latter project was embedded in a larger discussion about Poland’s inland navigation. Eventually, neither of these projects were finalized or even begun, before the second world war broke out. This paper analyses the discourse that took place on both issues, with a particular focus on their inevitable intersection. While describing the political background of this discourse, the article reconsiders the role of the engineers as the principal, sometimes overlooked, players in these processes. 

In the years 1919‒1939, „Kronika Farmaceutyczna” was the press organ of the Trade Union of Pharmaceutical Employees of the Republic of Poland. The magazine was filled with articles devoted to defence of pharmacists’ rights but the aim of its editors was also to publish scientific and popular content, in which a prominent place was occupied by articles on the history of natural medicines. This work attempts to analyse the forms and content of that kind of articles: describe how the subject of old medicines was written about, what types of medicines were discussed, and also who and why wrote about them. Articles devoted to the history of natural medicines can be divided in four categories: scientific and popular articles dedicated to current pharmaceutical issues and preceded by historical introductions; scientific and popular articles on history; summaries from foreign pharmaceutical magazines and news from the world covering pharmaceutical problems of the time, accompanied by historical introductions, as well as summaries from foreign pharmaceutical magazines and historical news from the world. According to our research, the majority of analysed articles belonged to the first category. Articles concerning the past of natural medicines appeared throughout the interwar period and became a permanent element of “Kronika Farmaceutyczna”. They focused on plant drugs, less often on zoonotic and mineral ones. Majority of texts were written according to a pattern based on chronological narration. Historical content was supplemented with ancient mythology information and folk medicine. Abundance of information obtained from contemporary literature dealing with this subject and from the sources proves that authors were undoubtedly erudite people. They committed some mistakes from time to time, though. Their errors, as well as uncomplicated, chronological system of narration were the results of the fact that they were not professional historians but pharmacists. Their interest in the past of natural medicines was to a large extent the outcome of general tendencies predominant in the Polish pharmaceutical milieu at that time. Analysed publications were therefore written by pharmacists and for pharmacists. Their purpose, aside from satisfying readers’ curiosity, was to deepen professional knowledge through enabling the perception of current pharmaceutical problems from the larger, historical perspective.

Henryk Genello was an architect who rendered great service for the Polish railway architecture during the 2nd Polish Republic. Together with engineer and architect Hipolit Hryncewicz, he designed around 50 railway stations in the Eastern borderlands, in the Vilnius Headquarters of the State Railways. In the 20s of the 20th century, he was designing in national style, while at the end of the 20s his designs already bore distinct modernist traits, and in the 30s they became totally functionalist. A valuable realisation of Genello and Hryncewicz was a representative “modernised” railway station on the border in Stołpce, essential for the evolution of Polish railway architecture of the 2nd Polish Republic. At the turn of the 20s and 30s of the 20th century, Genello designed railway stations on the Ustroń – Wisła line. They were realised in national style, partly wooden, inspired by the Polish mountain resort architecture of Zakopane. Another important Genello’s realisation of 1935 was a small building of a railway stop – Zułów, which in the 2nd Polish Republic had a memorative character of Marshall Piłsudski silhouette. It probably was the last “national” realisation in the Polish railway architecture. His works done in this style were characterised by simplicity, pure form, and drew on local types and motives of Polish architecture. Undoubtedly, Henryk Genello was better fulfilled when he designed in the earlier, historicising style, creating his own type inspired by local motives. His later functional realisations are characterised by simplicity, pared-down and austere form of elevations deprived of detail. It is certain that Genello belonged to the most important railway architects of the 2nd Polish Republic, working since 1932 as adviser in the Ministry of Transport, he shaped railway architecture of that time from its administrative and technical side. The same function Genello performed during the first years after the war.

Insects constitute as much as 75% of all described species of the world’s fauna. In the animal kingdom they play a dominant role. To certain extent it was reflected in folk medicine using zoonotic drugs. The purpose of the work is to determine, what kinds of insects were used t the time of Poland’s partitions and in the 2nd Polish Republic. Insects were used most often in such diseases, as: rheumatoid arthritis, paralysis, circulatory insufficiency and resulting oedemas, malaria, erysipelas, rabies, viper bites, trachoma, jaundice, skin diseases, cuts, hysteria. Close to 20 insect families were applied in folk medicine, although not all of the species can be counted, the more so as they were not always distinguished by the people of old Polish territories – both peasants and the researchers of their culture. Most often beetles and hymenopteras were used, less often – butterflies. There was widespread belief connected with this therapy, i.e. belief in magical meaning of numbers, especially number 3 and its multiple.