Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 78-79. (Budapest, 1976)

TANULMÁNYOK - Mádai Lajos: Településhigiénés és demográfiai viszonyok a fővárosban az 1870-es években (angol nyelven)

HYGIENIC AND DEMOGRAPHIC CONDITIONS IN BUDAPEST IN 1 8 70 ies BY LAJOS M ÁD Al Budapest celebrated the centenary of its unification in 1973. It was one hundred years earlier that three separate settlements, Pest, Buda, and Óbuda were united and given the name of Budapest. The first decade of the new capital (1873 —1882) was full of struggle. The given socioeconomic problems exerted a harmful influence also on the hygienic conditions, the health, and consequently the development of population. The cholera epidemic in the first year after the unification, the floods of 1875 and 1876 all caused severe losses among the population and the material wealth of the city. The economic depression lasting to 1882 slowed down the development of the capital. Production in the factories founded in the 1860's stagnated, many artisans were ruined, and the cost of living was continuously increasing. The contradictions of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in the socio-economic field were more and more apparent; the economic difficulties made it hardly possible to satisfy the needs of society, e.g. to replan and develop the city itself, to solve the housing problem, to build out the system of running water, drainage, and public sanitation, street-lighting, to establish cultural, health and other public institutions, etc. Far from being a metropolis, the new capital was also retarded in its development by the law concerning its unification, that ensured the local municipal board a very limited authority only. Selfgovernment in the capital did not differ from that in any other town in anything.* SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND SETTLEMENT CONDITIONS The population of Budapest at the time of the 1870 census consisted of 280,349 persons, soldiers included. The civil population in Pest amounted to 200,476 in Buda to 48,154, and in Óbuda to 21,846. Among the 25 most populous cities of * The above described conditions of society and economy are not in contradiction with the establishments enriching Budapest and the national wealth of the country alike, e.g. the Margarete Bridge and the Western Station finished in 1876 and 1877 resp., the new Town Hall, the University Library, the Opera House and the first steps in the construction of the Royal Castle.