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)
J. Antall: State Interference and the Dilemma of Liberalism in the Field of Medical Training and Public Health
STATE INTERFERENCE AND THE DILEMMA OF LIBERALISM IN THE FIELD OF MEDICAL TRAINING AND PUBLIC HEALTH* by JÓZSEF ANTALL >yhe problem of state interference is one the most debated questions of political science and policy-making. It has been discussed from various aspects: in economics, politics, cultural policy and health policy the last two hundred years have produced an abundant literature bearing on it. The culmination of this debate fell between the end of the ISth and the middle of the 19th century when liberalism was born from the ideas of the French Revolution, when liberalism formulated its intellectual system, in opposition to absolutism. 1 (Here we do not wish to deal with the role of the state in history in general; this has been done from a different aspect by another article in this volume. 2) The debate revived after some less productive years at the threshold of the 20th century when the decline of liberalism and the growth of the various trends of socialism, together with the tension of unsolved social questions, once more brought it in the lime-light. In the last decades, including the present, the form and depth of state interference remained a key-problem in political literature and practical government —naturally the forms being different according to the character of the various social and governmental structures, but showing similarities even in diametrically different cases. Therefore it appears worth while throwing some light on the historical roots and development of this question in medical history, mainly in Hungary, without claiming to any finality or completeness. LIBERALISM AND STATE INTERFERENCE Studying the history of state interference 3 one is led to the conclusion that —like in many other cases —there is no straight course in its evolution showing a clearly increasing or decreasing trend. According to Herbert Spencer, who wrote it not only once but made it one of the fundamental principles of his * The present article only summarizes the major questions. The detailed elaboration of the subject by the light of European, overseas and Hungarian liberalism will be done in another work to be published later. 1 W. G. Runciman, Social Science and Political Theory. Cambridge, 1965. 22. M. Vida, State-Models (Utopias) and Sociology of Medicine. Comm. Hist. Artis Med. Suppl. 6. (1972), pp. : i B. Somló, Állami beavatkozás és individualizmus. (State Interference and Individualism.) Budapest, 1903. p. 140.
