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

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

The community, district and municipal magistracies were the authorities of the first instance —or personally the magistrates—under which the District Municipal or Budapest-District Physician were merely reporting professional functionaries. The attention of these professional medical officers had to extend to everything covered by Act XIV. of 1876. The second chapter under Part II. speaks in detail about proceedings on business in the administrative apparatus, on the relations between the professional medical officers and the organs of state administration, and on the procedures to be followed. Executive authority is endowed only to physicians working in the 'Centre' (Chapter 3). According to Par. 166, the physicians permanently employed in the Public Health Department of the Ministry are entitled to the same rights and treatment as other government officials. Chapter 3 of Part II deals not only with the operation of the ministerial department but also regulates the organization and operation of the National Public Health Council —essentially in the same form as the Law decree of 1868. The details quoted should make it apparent what will be made quite evident by a study of the law: Act XIV of 1876 is an enabling act which has to be supplemented by central (governmental and ministerial) and local measures and regulations for practical operation. It was no fault of the framers of the law that only a few of the measures needed were actually issued in the next few decades and even when regulations and additional supplementary statutes were passed they were not executed. Two questions arise in this regard. Were those right who insisted that the Act XIV of 1876 was a law far in advance of its times, in fact a utopie dream of enthusiastic physicians of progressive spirit? Was Kornél Chyzer, that significant health politician of the century, one of the precursors of modern health administration, right when he wrote in 1890 . . our public health law, the German and French translations of which we intend as eye-wash for the educated West, are simply dead letters, which not even our great-grandchildren, however advanced they may become intellectually and materially, will be able to fill with life."

M In answer to the first question the answer is that as a matter of fact Act XIV of 1876 was not in advance of its times, but simply combined all the scattered health legislation of the industrialized western countries and in the first place of England. It can on the other hand be called utopistic because it ignored the given social circumstances of which Fodor spoke with such open criticism. Kornél Chyzer's bitter tirade can well be understood. He had already at his disposal the observations of about fifteen years since the enactment of the law, and it could be foreseen that the next fifteen years would also fail to improve matters. Wh it was, however, certain was that the aim of the law was by no means "eyewash for the educated West", for the educated West did not care 3i Kornél Chyzer: A Magyar Orvosok és Természetvizsgálók vándorgyűléseinek története (History of the Congresses of the Hungarian Physicians and Naturalists) 1890, p. 108.