J. Antall szerk.: Medical history in Hungary. Presented to the XXII. International Congress for the History of Medicine / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 4. (Budapest, 1970)
ESSAYS-LECTURES - J. Antall: Absolutism and Liberalism in Health Policy in Hungary (in English)
civilization, inherited from our fathers . In respect of these questions I feel in sympathy with you in my heart, and I belong to the same political creed with you " [11]. LIBERALISM AND HEALTH POLICY As it was the nature of liberalism, the centralists had an aversion to state interference in the various fields of public life. For a long time they envisaged the organization of education and public health on an Anglo-Saxon pattern, to be based on voluntary social associations and enterprises. They were haunted by the memory of enlightened absolutism, or Josephinism, even as regarded the intervention of the state in a progressive direction. But they were the first to recognize the necessity of the interference of the constitutional and democratic state in the interest of progression. And to its acceptance the contribution of the leading figures of public education and public health—in our case the medical school of Pest—was not on a small scale. Though cautiously and with reservations, but similar conclusions were drawn by Lajos Kossuth, the representative of classical liberalism. "In the last century the notion dominated in political science that the only duty of the state is the protection of the social order, and the rest must be left to go on its own way. But social relations have become so complicated, the mechanical and natural sciences introduced so many new elements into life where the new demands cannot be met by individual action, that the principle of the previous century is no longer applicable to the conditions of today, consequently the impression has arisen that the duty of the state is not only to be the guardian of order but also to be the lever of progress" [12]. Eötvös was drawn into the field of social politics not only by his political philosophy but by his humanism too. His speeches on "Misery in Ireland", on the penal code, and on the system of prisons, as well as his literary works, show his keen interest in social problems. But his true "field" was cultural policy. These are the two "pillars" we should start from when assessing the public health policy of Eötvös and the centralists, their role in the reform of medical training, in higher education, and in science-policy. It would be unnecessary to go into the details of their planned and undertaken reforms concerning medical training (in 1848, after the Compromise, and in 1875 respectively), of the largescale constructions of university-buildings, of their role in establishing institutes and universities. The ministries of Eötvös and Trefort holding the portfolio of Education, and the activities of Markusovszky , forming the link between the two, meant the setting down of the foundations of modern Hungarian medical education [13]. The question may be raised whether the centralists had a health policy already at the beginning of the 1840s? The answer can be only in the negative. At the time of the cholera epidemic of 1831 Eötvös is only meditating on the individual tragedies and on the defenselessness of man in his letter to Szalay [14]. Health policy and drawing up programs for public education already belongs to the 152
