While the selection criteria for wet-nurses had little changed across two millennia, other aspects of their occupation were far from homogenous, changing under the diverse infl uences of culture, current threats to the health of wet-nurses and the babies they fed, contemporaneous medical knowledge and healthcare. Fears of the transmission of the prevailing infectious diseases of the times led to medical involvement at all levels, from selection and inspection of applicants for wet-nurse positions to treatment of illnesses that arose in the child. The article discusses the implications of syphilis, the most serious disease transmissible through wet-nursing before the discovery of antibiotics, and the preventive measures and treatment used by the physicians across fi ve centuries, according to the knowledge of the time. The period covered extends into the early-twentieth century.

The appearance of cholera in Poland was a signifi cant epidemiological problem. One of the fi rst works devoted to the etiology, the search for methods of therapy as well as the necessary hygienic and sanitary measures to prevent the spread of this disease was written in 1830 by Michał Kaczkowski. His work, despite the passage of years, still deserves attention.

The text concerns the legal regulations on the maintenance of physical condition by soldiers in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the 18th century, which until now in historiography were on the margins of interest of military historians. Meanwhile, the issues of feeding, foraging horses, housing quarters of soldiers, the availability of stables for animals or problems related to maintaining health affecting the maintenance of health and good physical condition seem extremely important in the research on the Crown Army of King Stanisław August. The article refers to the provisions contained in two regulations. In 1775, regulations of camp and garrison service for cavalry regiments were issued by hetman Franciszek Ksawery Branicki. Among other things, it specifi es how the army should leave the camp, how the march should proceed, and how the newly founded camp should look. The issue of foraging was regulated and attention was paid to the proper behavior of soldiers in the quarters. Instructions were also issued regarding the establishment and maintenance of feldspar and fi eld hospital. Second regulations, camp and garrison services issued for the whole army, sent out. He discussed in detail the issues related to camp service and everyday life in the garrison. The guidelines of both regulations were compiled in the text with source material from individual units of the Crown Army. This allows you to answer the question whether the regulations were followed by soldiers.

This article based on the treatise Liber de sinthomatibus muluerum considered one of the most important medieval treaties on gynecology and obstetrics discusses the issues related to the problem of male and female infertility. Despite the fact that its author remains unknown the treatise is an important source showing the state of medical knowledge in this area. Despite the fact that the author tells about procreation of both sexes, he defi nitely paid more attention to women what indicates that for him they were more responsible for the lack of offspring. Information about irregular menstruation, abnormal physical structure and psychological problems show that it was already known how many factors impact on procreation.

An independent Department of Science and Higher education at the KC PZPR was created in 1949 to take responsibility for all matters related to the development of science and higher education in the post-war Stalinist Poland. The department was responsible not only for the development of new solutions in the domain of science and higher education, but it also created reports on the entire process of education itself, the level of the ideological education of the students, the number of graduates etc. College faculty was another major area of interest. The surviving documentation consists of i.a. copies of various international trip request forms, reports from scientifi c conferences, memos describing the scientifi c community of a given college, as well as various types of complaints and denunciations. The article focuses mainly on the professors from the various medical colleges and aims at presenting a snapshot of the then-contemporary medical elite in the scientifi c domain as seen by Party offi cials. To what extent was the presented image distorted and what was the reason for its creation? – those are only some of the questions that the article tries to answer.

In early modern times, numerous inhabitants of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, both townsmen and representatives of the nobility and magnatery, visited the United Provinces. Many of the burghers also studied at the University of Leiden or other Dutch universities and gymnasia. In the autumn of 1727, Nathanael Jacob Gerlach from Gdańsk/Danzig matriculated at the Academia Lugduno-Batava. The Danziger, together with his tutor, Christian Gabriel Fischer, took a few-year educational journey through Western countries. The testimony of their several months’ stay in the Netherlands is the 2nd volume of Fischer’s handwritten Itinerarium. The selection presents those excerpts from the 2nd volume of the diaries which describe people, places and events related to the teaching of medicine and natural history in the 18th century Netherlands. The fi rst part of the paper focuses on Leiden, the second one – on Amsterdam, Haarlem and Utrecht.