Kapronczay Károly szerk.: Orvostörténeti Közlemények 194-195. (Budapest, 2006)

TANULMÁNYOK — ARTICLES - SCHULTHEISZ, Emil: Literature on Public Health and State Medicine in Hungary in the Age of Enlightenment

Sonnenfels - along with van Swieten - played a crucial role in having the Viennese imperial court issue those orders which were aimed at creating the healthcare system of the entire Habsburg Empire and within it, the Kingdom of Hungary. In his famous book on public administration (Grundsaetze der Polizey-, Handlung-, und Finanzwissenschaft I—III, 17651776), von Sonnenfels gave a very detailed description of the theoretical foundations and modes of execution of such measures that were deemed necessary for preserving the security of the state, maintaining the safety of life for society as a whole and for the ruler's subjects, and fostering "the happiness of humans" in general. In this book, he spoke in the fullest detail about the duties of the state related to healthcare, the work and legal relations of physicians and healthcare personnel who performed a public service, and the establishment and operation of healthcare institutions. He also wrote about matters connected more strictly to the issue of public health, even including food hygiene, the sanitation of public places, and the fight against quackery among his proposals. Prior to the Enlightenment, the measures taken for the sake of public health would serve the individual only in an indirect manner and to an insignificant degree. Neither the leprosoria of the early Middle Ages, nor the quarantine stations of the late Middle Ages were established out of humanitarian considerations, and neither were intended to serve the purposes of the individual. Even the establishment of hospitals, or the treatment of poor patients - a service operated by the magistracy -, was only partly based on charitable and humane considerations; the segregation of the sick was dictated primarily by fear. Healthcare in the 18

th century was aimed at serving both the individual and the state. The new thought of the age meant that the route leading to greater "common good" and "utility" was clearly mapped out, also in the area of healthcare, in the spirit of the raison d'État. It thus became the obvious and even compulsory task of the state to provide for health protection, and to organize the treatment of the sick - who were viewed both as individuals and imperial subjects -, taking account of all those factors in which the interests of the state were vested. This went so far as to include raising the population's cultural standard to a certain degree, partly through instructing people about medical and healthcare issues. Huszty's works were the first in Hungary to discuss the theoretical foundations of this process and its modes of implementation. Zakariás Teofil Huszty de Raszinya - a scholar renowned throughout Europe for his achievements in the field of public health, yet hardly ever acknowledged in his homeland, and in fact not very widely known even today -, was born in a family from the lower nobility in Ruszt, in the Transdanubian region of Hungary, on 13

th March 1754. He completed his secondary school studies at the famous evangelical college of Sopron, established in 1557. Having finished his studies there, he enrolled in 1771 in the medical faculty of the university of Vienna. Despite a few truly remarkable professors, the standard of education at the famous Viennese faculty was stagnant at the time when Huszty studied there, and, failing to live up to Huszty's expectations, discouraged him from continuing his studies in Vienna. He himself gave an account of these developments in the first volume of his main work, written in the German language, to which we will shortly return in more detail. Huszty wrote in his book that although van Swieten, the reorganizer of the Viennese medical faculty and the originator and organizer of the medical faculty at the university in Nagyszombat (present-day Trnava), had implemented a large number of significant reforms