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

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

considerable quantities of child labour under horrific social conditions. Act XXVIII of 1893 contains the first provisions regarding accident protection for industry and factory workers and appointment of trade inspectors. Carried into effect for the first time through this law were the workers' accident protection, technologic accident prevention and first-aid requirements, as initiated by Lumniczer and adopted by the Public Health Council; but adequate punitive sanctions against offenders for their non-compliance with the requirements of the law were missing. When the same Act called a Trade Inspection Board of Hungary into being, it was originally meant, unlike the coeval institution of Britain, to enforce the interests of the developing industry, with the staff of inspectors exclusively consisting of engineers. In 1906 on the territory of "historic" Hungary there were not more than 40 Factory Inspectors (all engineers) and their responsibilities included the safety examination of boilers also. But the number of registered factory plants in Hungary was 7,849, a multiple of what the existing staff of inspectors could cope with, if only to the extent of a cursory control. Under legal provision they would have been bound to supervise every factory plant (including boiler test) at least once a year; to furnish detailed account of their total function; to report about the standing of industry, about provisions and orders for licences to set up factory plants and for related affairs. The inspector was supposed to report what experience he has made in the line of industrial education and what observation in the line of labour protection; he was moreover required to state in all detail the facts he discovered in connection with accidents, the circumstances under which they occurred, the existence of safety installations, especially if the accident led to fatal issue or to grave consequences. The Factory Inspector was supposed to test the prevalence of conditions detrimental to the health of workers; he was authorized and obliged by law but made very rare use of the power, to call in a medical officer to assist him. In distinction to Great Britain where the Board of Factory Inspectors, consisting for the most part of physicians, had been called into being with the main purpose to prevent health injuries and to provide labour protection for children and women, in Hungary it was made up —at least in the initial phase of care for industrial health affairs —of engineers who made a major point of promoting industrial development and keeping factory plants safe from boiler explosion and the occurrence of other accidents. A case calling attention drastically to itself was the blasting of the Gas Factory of Pest. The workers, organized or in the state of organization, raised again and again the legitimate demand that the Board of Factory Inspectors change its essential character, turn into an integrated organ of labour protection and grant admission into its ranks for representatives of the working class. Voiced likewise was the idea to coopt female workers so as to see that the legal provisions for the protection of women be carried into effect. Theoretically this would have been feasible but in practice the technocratic concept of trade control remained prevalent up to the end of World War II. Every now and then in the interwar period a physician or a building engineer would be appointed as Factory