J. Antall szerk.: Medical history in Hungary 1972. Presented to the XXIII. International Congress of the History of Medicine / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 6. (Budapest, 1972)
M. Vida: State-Models (Utopias) and Sociology of Medicine
12 Medical History in Hungary 1972 (Comm. Hist . Artis Med . Suppl. 6.) base as it provides the expensive opportunities of development and research work, furthermore social continuity of knowledge. Some time ago medical problems were in the field of sociological interest exclusively, the physicians paid attention to social questions, because the subject and function of medicine were abounding with social elements. Thus the activity of the physician coincided with that of the sociologist. 1 Robert Strauss, a well-known American sociologist systhematizing the medical sociology, divided it into two main parts. One of them was usociology in medicine " in which social reactions against diseases were studied, the other, "sociology of medicinewhere social elements of public health were discussed. The latter deals with the structure and organization of public health and the combination of circumstances going through them. 2 The organization of public health may be studied historically at first in the hospital system. Therefore the hospital, as an establishment is the centre of research of the sociology of medicine. The hospital is a meeting place between physician and patient. From the 18th century on wards the role of hospital especially became important in medicine, when teaching and research entered wards by the initiative of Boerhaave, and so hospital teaching meant the base of medical training. The term hospital means the activity of physicians, nurses and an administrative organization for the treatment of patients. 2' 0 1 Our study deals with public health of Utopias describing the ideal and imagined societies from ancient times until today and investigates the level of medicine in each historical period. The reason why we turn to this subject is that sociological evaluation leads to philanthropism which involves humanistic, socialistic and communistic principles. UTOPIAS OF HISTORY Sir Thomas More, a scholar and statesman in the 16th century, entitled his communistical political novel Utopia in such a way, that this name had been derived from him. Utopia originally means "no place" in Greek, but in More's work it is an ideal and imagined social political and governmental order in a fictions country, where all the unachievable could be realized. Althouhg this term had been used firstly by More, its origin goes further back, because political novels, as a literary form describing ideal societies, were 1 Buda, B .; Az orvostudomány és az egészségügy szociológiája. (Sociology of Medicine and Public Health.) Valóság, 1964, 10, 52 — 64 pp.; see Parsons, T.: The Social System. Clencoe, Illionis, 1951; Susser, M. W^.—Watson, W. : Sociology in Medicine. London, 1962. 2 Straus, R. : The Nature and Statues of Medical Sociology. Amer. Sociol. Rev. 1957. Vol. 22. 200-204 pp. 2/ a Rohde, J. J. : Soziolog¿e des Krankenhauses. Zur Einführung in die Soziologie der Medizine. Stuttgart, 1962. — Encyclopaedic discussion of sociological aspects of hospital.
