Stanisław Trzebiński (1861–1930), professor at Stefan Batory University in Vilnius, was one of the most distinguished representatives of the Polish School of Philosophy of Medicine before the Second World War. He undertook studies in neurology, philosophy of medicine, and literature.

The article explores Trzebiński’s philosophical ideas, especially his call for rationality in medicine and the concept of absurdity in medicine as a precondition for the development of medical knowledge and practice. Today this method is an essential background in Evidence-Based Medicine and confirms cultural and scientific forms of cognition.

In 1946, at the request of the Polish government, UNRRA sent in two British experts in vocational rehabilitation to help establish the national framework of helping people with disabilities. During numerous meetings with government representatives, medical doctors, and social workers, as well as by trainings, lectures, and screenings of instructional films, they tried to familiarise Poles with the British model of rehabilitation. The model assumed close integration of medical and vocational rehabilitation and aimed at placing the disabled workers in the industry alongside those without disabilities. Initially, officials from the Polish Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare seemed to be keen to adopt such an approach, but in 1949, they turned toward the Soviet solutions. One of the main effects of this shift was moving away from employing the disabled in the industry. They were encouraged to join cooperatives instead, which, in the end, proved to be unfavorable to their social rehabilitation.

The article reconstructs the activity of the British experts in Poland and analyses their observations from the encounters. By situating these events in a broader context of political and social conditions, I argue that replacing the progressive British model with Soviet solutions stemmed from the ongoing process of the Sovietization of Poland.

The article presents the forgotten figure of Franciszek Rychnowski, an engineer from Lviv, mainly relying on his own writings and press releases from the period. The text describes his pioneering technical activity in Galicia, especially in the field of heating and electrical engineering. As far as it was possible, the paper elaborates on the concept of the so-called electroid (or etheroid) – substance (or energy) which Rychnowski held responsible for all phenomena in nature, and around which he forged his own theory of the operation of the universe. The text includes the summaries of his talks, interviews, and more interesting reports on the alleged properties of this substance, as well as reactions to them.

One of the significant achievements in Polish science was the liquefaction of oxygen, air, and other gases in 1883 by the Jagiellonian University professors – Zygmunt Wróblewski and Karol Olszewski. Over the next few years, Krakow became one of the leading units in researching the physicochemical properties of gases. The mechanical workshop of the Jagiellonian University, which produced custom-made laboratory devices for liquefying gases, also gained recognition. The devices were designed by Karol Olszewski, a professor of chemistry at the Jagiellonian University, who modelled them on the countercurrent condenser by William Hampson. The apparatuses were made by the university mechanic, Władysław Grodzicki (1864–1927), who held this post in the years 1897–1927. He offered three types of apparatuses: a cased apparatus, a demonstration apparatus for air liquefaction, and a universal apparatus for liquefaction of air and hydrogen. In order to test how they functioned, a complete gas liquefaction apparatus was installed in the laboratory (including purifiers, a compressor, etc.). These devices were bought by European research institutions, universities, and schools. Grodzicki’s activity contributed to the popularisation of research on low temperatures conducted at the Jagiellonian University. At the same time, it was one of the few Polish companies offering high-class scientific instruments.

One of the richest natural history collections in Europe at the end of the 18^th century was the Cabinet of Natural History of Duchess Anna Jabłonowska née Sapieha (1728–1800) in Siemiatycze. In 1802, the collection was purchased by Tsar Alexander I and handed over to the University in Moscow (where it burned down in 1812). It was only possible to recreate the richness of the collection and the way it was taken over after the sales documents had been found in 2008 in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. However, some documents were illegible, and it was only in 2020 that the entire documentation was read. It revealed a completely different image of the collection than expected, as in one part the collection refers to cabinets of curiosities. The article is the first publication in Polish on Anna Jabłonowska’s “art cabinet”, with translations of the lists of exhibits by Count Stanisław Sołtyk (from French) and by V.M. Severgin and A.F. Sevastyanov (from Russian).

The article presents the Polish translation and analysis of the letters from Władysław Taczanowski (1819–1890) to Aleksander Strauch (1832–1893). The correspondence is stored in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg and comprises 29 letters written between 1870 and 1889. The main theme of these letters is specimens of reptiles and amphibians sent to Warsaw by Polish naturalists, such as Benedykt Dybowski from Siberia, Konstanty Jelski from French Guiana and Peru, Jan Kalinowski from Korea, as well as specimens brought by Taczanowski from Algeria. Strauch determined the species and used them in his publications. This correspondence is also a valuable testimony of the exchange of specimens between the Warsaw Zoological Cabinet and the Zoological Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. In return for herpetological specimens, the Warsaw collection received numerous fish specimens from the Russian Empire and a collection of birds from Mikołaj Przewalski’s expedition to Central Asia. The content of the letters allows a better understanding of the functioning of natural history museography but also the organization of shipments, preparation, determination, and exchange of specimens. They are a valuable document of the history of nineteenth-century scientific museography.

In 2017, the Leon Wyczółkowski District Museum in Bydgoszcz purchased the collection of a private pharmacy museum, previously functioning in the back of the now-liquidated Pod Łabędziem (‘Under the Swan’) pharmacy in Bydgoszcz, first opened in 1853. Among the acquired museum exhibits, there is prescription room equipment from the Polish People’s Republic period. From the point of view of museum workers and researchers of pharmaceutical material culture, in order to learn more about the acquisitions, it is essential to answer the following questions: Where and when were the prescription furniture and their equipment produced? Were they used only in Pod Łabędziem (‘Under the Swan’) pharmacy? Is the room equipment complete? What can the preserved equipment tell us about the type of drugs produced there? The conducted analysis allows us to state that the prescription furniture were manufactured in Nowe nad Wisłą at the turn of the 1970s. The prescription room is an original component of the described pharmacy but preserved in a truncated form. Its location is secondary. Chaos reigns among the preserved utensils. The current state of affairs does not reflect the standards of work in the former community pharmacy. The sum of the cases prevails over the genius loci.

Hematology emerged from the study of internal diseases in the twentieth century. Its history can be divided into three periods: the first (elementary) – separation from internal diseases, the second (interdisciplinary) – development by combining the achievements from other fields and joint activities of research teams, and the third (which is difficult to label as it is ongoing) – cognition at the genetic and molecular level. Thanks to the progress of science (immunology, serology, genetics, cytogenetics, genetic engineering, etc.) and the use of their discoveries in broadly-understood hematology, there has been a spectacular change in the knowledge about blood diseases and prognosis. The spectrum of treatment of chronic diseases has been expanded, improving the quality of patients’ lives, and the diagnostic possibilities have been enlarged. The history of such an important field of medicine has been little studied in Poland. This article aims to justify the need to research the history of Polish hematology.