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)
health and public education were economic affairs as well, since they determined the physical and spiritual state of one of the major factors of production: manpower. In his letter to József Fodor, Trefort set forth the view that "the political and economic weight of a nation " depends on the demographic changes. He asked Fodor, the professor of public health, to explain the unfavourable mortality conditions of Hungary. (It is interesting to note that on the basis of population changes Trefort made some guesses on the probable historical role and political influence of some countries in the 20th century. For 1932 he predicted the following order of the great powers: United States, Russia, German Empire, while the role of Britain would gradually decrease and France would fall behind, as compared to the 19th century.) [16]. Surveying this long epoch burden with contradictions, the period of the 18th and 19th centuries, one may reach a conclusion which might sound striking at first glance. Absolutism and liberalism, partly as each other's followers, partly in the relation of action and reaction, are undoubtedly politically irreconcilable, opposite doctrines. The first embodies the rule of the sovereign, his absolute method of government, and especially the forces represented by the ruler. The second, in turn, preaches parliamentarism, dependent on the will of the people. But what can one see in the field of applied politics? Enlightened absolutism in the 18th century and neo-absolutism in the middle of the 19th follow a program in public education and public health, that is in two sections of applied politics, which is partly or wholly unquestionably progressive. And what is more, if inspected closer, it draws attention to progressive social and cultural policy—due to its innate acceptence of state interference —earlier than liberalism, which his individualist and is reluctant to accept the principle of state reason. In addition, in the subject-matter of applied politics, which is at least as much determined by the general historical needs of the various ages and by their identical or similar technical-cultural basis as their political philosophy or "Weltanschaung", one can find similarities, even identities between the two. In higher education and in public health the reformists of Austrian neo-absolutism wanted to achieve the same as the mouthpieces of Hungarian liberalism. Sometimes it is due to this symptom that the ardent follower of political liberalism, when forced to withdraw from the forums, finds an opportunity in the administration of neo-absolutism, or limited liberalism, to carry his program through, partly or entirely, in public education or public health. Different social and political structures often create identical or similar mechanisms in practice, even without changing their social and political order. Several individual careers of the ages of great transformations, the identical endeavours of absolutists and liberal reformers can be understood only bearing the above in mind. As we have said before, modern Hungary came into being in the decades of the fight for national independence and bourgeois transformation (1825—1890), during the Age of Reforms, the War of Independence, the period of neo-absolutism, which meant both subjugation and preparation, and finally in the first part of the dualist period following the Compromise of 1867. Semmelweis did not live to see the Compromise, Balassa was still present at the birth of the constitutional order, at the establishment of the influential National Public Health Council; 154
