The American epidemiologist Milton J. Rosenau – one of the pioneers of public health – is the author of the concept of “conquest of fear”, which stimulated the development of preventive medicine. However, this concept was in fact a kind of strategy of fear management and as such necessarily led to the gradual domination of preventive pro-health strategies by the permanent therapy strategies. The negative consequences of this strategy can be read in the main work of Rosenau, a preventive medicine textbook, and were presented in a literary form by the French writer Jules Romains.

The last days of the Polish-Russian war of 1831 are the storming of Warsaw. This fact is generally perceived through the prism of military operations, but no less important was the operation of the military health service headed by Karol Kaczkowski acting as the chief staff doctor. Risking his own life, he rushed to help soldiers injured in combat, along with his subordinate medics, including foreigners. After the capitulation of the capital, the Russians who entered the city treated the wounded and sick with all brutality. Traces have survived, among others in the little-known in Poland diary of the Swedish physician Sven Jonas Stille.

Michele Savonarola’s treatise Ad mulieres Ferrarienses de regimine pregnantium et noviter natorum usque ad septennium is one of the most important gynecological and pediatric treaties written in Italy in the 15th century. Undoubtedly, the language in which it were written and its recipients was a novelty for those times. Savonarola had to connect the high mortality of women and children with the little knowledge of the midwives of the time, since he decided to write this treatise. The work certainly allowed them to reach medical knowledge, previously unavailable for them, but the limitations applied in it did not allow for self-treatment, but forced them to frequent consult a doctor. Numerous references to earlier authors testify the Savonarola’s extensive theoretical knowledge and accurate observations the rich medical practice.

The second part of the paper presents those excerpts from the second volume of N.J. Gerlach and Ch.G. Fischer Itinerarium, which describe people, places and events related to the teaching of medicine and natural history in Amsterdam, Haarlem and Utrecht.

In the collections of Turkish public scientific institutions, museums and libraries, there are extensive resources of historical artifacts connected thematically with the history of medicine and pharmacy. They include mainly manuscript books in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and also in Greek and Latin, which were gathered in the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The historical and medical collections contain also numerous printed books, including critical editions of the work by the classic authors of Islamic medicine together with their translations into congressional languages. In Istanbul, we can also fi nd numerous examples of various types of devices and equipment used in connection with the treatment and production of medicines. The article consists of two parts. The first part presents the outline of the history of the evelopment of historical collections in Istanbul connected with the history of medicine and pharmacy. The second part describes selected museum facilities and collections.