Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 66-68. (Budapest, 1973)

TANULMÁNYOK - Bugyi Balázs: Az iparegészségügy kezdetei Magyarországon (1928-ig) (angol nyelven)

the Society only comprised representatives of the industrialists' organizations and of the Government but in later years, on the evidence of extant membership lists, it also admitted a number of factory doctors; their names are: Miksa Bród, Béla Chyzer, Vilmos Friedrich, Adolf Goldner, Dezső Hahn, Emil Hajnik, István Moldoványi, Henrik Pach and Fülöp Stein. Not as if these had been the only ones to take care of workers' health in the infirmaries of company sick-relief funds and in factory medical offices, etc., but the rest of physicians apparently was little interested in matters of labour hygiene and consequently did not seek access to an organization, concerned with industrial health affairs. The trade unions, whom it took not long to realize the importance of the Society, mainly as a body of health propaganda, delegated some of their leading functionaries into its staff, thus turning the Society of Legal Labour Protection of Hungary into a significant (though so far not adequately appreciated) organization of the working class. The hottest debates and thoroughest fact-finding inquiries within the Society were those concerned with points of child labour and with questions how to save juvenile workers from health impairments. These were the main subjects of study in the work of Béla Chyzer who pointed to the "particular stresses that puerile and adolescent workers suffer by exposure to the continual or long lasting and often highly damaging effects of certain industrially processed or produced substances." Here is a first pronouncement in medical literature of the view that adolescents are prone, probably in an even higher degree than children, to health-damaging impacts, in work places. Intolerable—he contends—is to apply the term "male labour" to subjects aged 14 years or less, who are still a long way this side the limit of childhood. Published in 1909 under the title "Juvenile Labour in Hungary" were the results of the comprehensive survey Chyzer conducted with the help of a questionary action, to find out about the actual conditions that prevailed in domestic factories. In it the author is concerned with the effect physical labour is exercising on the puerile system and tries to determine the length of time a child will be able to bear the bodily stress laid upon him. Other discussed points include that of the necessary though not always granted rest ; the economic conditions of child work; the advantages and disadvantages of earning money at a too early age of life; the facts about the incomes and expenses of child workers; the prevailing conditions for the employment of children, together with the influence these exercise on health and morals? —all this broken down to individual lines of occupation; the experience gained generally in the fields of agriculture, large-scale industry, handicraft, and specifically in brick factories, glass foundries, flour mills, bakeries and shoe factories, with reference to special problems of child workers in the bread-making and glass industries and in a few other trades; the appointment of children in part-time jobs, etc. Chyzer's book with its objective judgements, its factual mode of inquiry and its concluding series of sound proposals has turned into a fundamental work of domestic industrial health research. His statements have been readily brought to bear in the report the Society for Legal Labour Protection of Hungary referred to the