Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 66-68. (Budapest, 1973)

TANULMÁNYOK - Bugyi Balázs: Az iparegészségügy kezdetei Magyarországon (1928-ig) (angol nyelven)

When Aladár Rózsahegyi studied the caisson building operations for a bridge over the river Mur at Graz (his uncle, engineer Pál Burger, being there in charge), and jotted down his experiences for use at a time when the building of Danube bridges in Budapest would call for them, he was actually conducting the first preventive type of health research in Hungary. Finding atmospheric pressure values between 1,4835 and 1,4870 to prevail within the caissons at Graz, he did not notice any particular changes in the workers, except their slightly accelerated pulses; neither did he attribute any detrimental effect to the high-pressure condition but warned only to take care of improved air supply. Nowhere in his report is there any reference to a symptom suggestive of caisson disease and the only factor he feared was the danger that the caisson should crack. But in Budapest, when building work started under much higher pressure conditions than in the Mur bridge caissons, the first patients affected by the compressed-air disease presently made their appearance. Since the use of air-chamber acclimatization and pressure methods under the very scanty physiologic and pathologic knowledge of caisson life at that time has hardly been insisted upon, it is no wonder that a few deaths by compressedair disease were recorded during the construction of Budapest's Francis Joseph (today Liberty) Bridge. Vilmos Friedrich who discussed at great length the occurrence of health detriments and injuries in connection with caisson work for the building of Budapest's Danube bridges, called attention also to the air-chamber technology and to the importance of subjecting the patient to reiterated spells of compressed air-lock and unlock treatment. IX. The provisions contained in Act XXVIII of 1893 for accident prevention of industrial and factory workers and in Act XIX of 1907 for the sickness and accident insurance of industry and trade employees lent speed to the process of calling sickness relief funds into being, as had existed already before the turn of the century in a few giant works which earned general acknowledgement and appreciation for the models of social welfare and health institutions, established within their walls. A good example in point is the Hungarian Iron, Steel and Machine Factory (MÁVAG) which, at the time of the millennial jubilee of the occupation of Hungary by the nomadian hungarian tribes (1890), was equipped already with a modern system of ventilation units, supplied to them and installed on the premises by B.F. Sturtevan Co. of Boston (GB). The workers colony of the same plant, adjacent to the factory ground itself, was fitted with common-bath, disinfecting chamber as well as a non-stop firstaid station. Performing duty in the MÁVAG health service organization were three full-time doctors, including an operating surgeon, backed by a numerous staff of attendants (technicians, health nurses etc.). The equipment of the factory doctor's office comprised an X-ray apparatus already in 1890 (when Roentgen's invention was only just about to start out on its world conquering