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

TANULMÁNYOK - Székely Sándor: Az 1876-os közegészségügyi törvény előkészítéséről (angol nyelven)

Monarchy, as the former Monarchy came to be called. Count Gyula Andrássy became Prime-Minister of the Hungarian Government, and Baron Béla Wenckheim Minister of the Interior. The Government intended to make public health a responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior. University affairs—including medical education—continued to remain within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Religion and Education under Baron József Eötvös. At the Rimaszombat* MOT Congress which met in August 1867, half a year after the Compromise, the fate of the bill was brought up. According to the minutes Endre Kovács Sebestyén replied to the question as follows: 4

'The reason for the delay ... is owing to the fact that the Health Department of the Ministry of the Interior has not been organized yet ; and on the part of the Parliament, the reason probably is that being occupied with vital issues of constitutional law, it could not have had time to discuss the public health motion"

9 The meeting went on record accepting a resolution that the MOT was to address a petition to the Minister of the Interior, urging the actual drafting of the bill on the basis of the recommendation. The petition says in its introduction that although some measures were taken when there was fear of an epidemic or of abuses jeopardizing public health, but as these measures did not have the force of law, they "were never carried out on a national scale and completely." Data were cited on the effects of the unsatisfactory conditions of public health. Whereas in the Western states the general "middle age" was between 28 and 38, it was 20 to 21 in Hungary; and whereas the mortality rate of children between 0 and 5 was 29 to 30 per cent in the West, it was over 50 per cent in Hungary. The mortality of the population was so high that in several administrative areas, including the municipality of Pest, more people died than were born. And all this was caused by diseases, endemics in Hungary, which could easily be prevented by expedient public health measures. "At their Twelfth Congress, held recently at Rimaszombat," went on the petition, 4

'the Hungarian Physicians and Naturalists were deeply aware how strongly the good of the country, the moral and material power of the state, depended on the physical wellbeing of its citizens, and therefore with the most profound respect they again request your Excellency to act with patriotic vigour for the adjustment of public health affairs too while you are engaged in the constitutional organization of the country." The petition than continued, "Your Excellency, public health represents our most precious material interests, and consequently from the point of view of public welfare it precedes the affairs of finance, trade, industry, etc. So public health doubly merits the consideration of the High Royal Ministry; it merits that the legislation of our homeland adjust the affairs of public health in the same way as it deals with the problems of justice, the interior and finance; the State should pay the same amount of attention to public health as it devotes to these. * Today Rimavska Sobota, Czechoslovakia. 9 A MOT Nagygyűlései (Congresses of the MOT). Vol. XII, Pest 1868, p. 144. 5 Orvostörténeti Közlemények 66—

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