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
J. Antall: State Interference and the Dilemma of Liberalism . 43 result, on a theoretical basis. This is the well known case of mistaken generalization. Medical history, too, offers examples to this. In the decades of the liberal protest against state interference medical non-interference, "natural cures" flourished, and there was a demand to give all medical trends (e.g. homoeopathy) a free chance to try to apply their methods. It is obvious that complete refrain from medical interference, like laissez faire , laissez passer in society and politics, was a reaction against erroneous, perhaps even forcible medical interference. Such notions should therefore be treated as criticism, corrective endeavour, but not as a standpoint of general and lasting value. They represent a transition between discarding fallacious practice an adopting the right one. Therefore in defining and critically examining the extent of state interference, not simply the range of the regulated field should be considered, as that is determinded by scientific and technical progress. The object of the investigation should be the justified or excessive extent of the regulated field, whether submission is voluntary of forced, whether interference is imposed or naturally accepted. Usually regulation is necessary when the inordinate state of something creates a problem and calls for regulation. When as a result of innate social demands and development, under favourable economic conditions, the arising problems are solved, there is rarely any need for central, state regulation. It is by no means accidental that through the centuries Eastern European development showed a much greater number of etatist, absolutist tendencies than the more developed and more complex progress of the West. 7 In Western Europe even within identical social structures the attitude to state interference may differ, partly on the basis of existing actual interests, partly based on the traditions of political philosophy. 8 In France the economic philosophy of Colbert always had a strong impact resulting in the acceptance of state interference, "support by the state", whereas in Britain the traditions of free trade were firmly rooted in public thinking, sometimes even to the detriment of real interests. Arriving from Eastern-Central Europe the great Hungarian statesman Lajos Kossuth (1802—1894) contrasted the English and French models, administrative centralism versus the policy of self-government, when weighing the various systems in his exile. It can be also noticed that in countries which were for a long time under foreign rule there emerges a negative attitude to all administration, a certain lack of confidence in anything official, coming from above. In these peoples the spirit of sterile opposition may become part of the national character, as it happened with the Hungarian and the Polish nobilities. (Of course this is still more attractive then the servility of the broken backbone, which may also be the result.) Thus state interference put the adherents of liberalism into a dilemma in the field of medical training and public health, too. The memory of absolutism 7 J. Antall, The Birth of the Medical School of Pest and the Centralists. Comm. Hist. Artis Med. 57—59. (1971). p. 173. 8 I. R. Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government. Chicago, 1961. 72. D. Mathew, Lord Acton and His Times. London, 1968.
