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)
E. Réti: Darwin's Influence on Hungarian Medical Thought (1868—1918) 157 J. Antall, A. Faiudy and K. Kapronczay: József Fodor and Public Health in Hungary
J. Antall—A. Faludÿ — K. Kapronczay : József Fodor iji to his field, and, in order to contribute to the spread of practical knowledge of the matters of public health in Hungary: to establish the basis of an effective health legislation and administration. He therefore gives a more detailed analysis of questions which were in the focus of interest in his country at that time, and by which he hoped to accelerate the introduction of hygienic measures. His book is an accumulation of valuable information with an extensive comparative statistical material, and with a collection of evidence from all field of interest relating to public health, a characteristic feature of the whole generation of public health reformers of his age. To render accurate statistical information, to provide the public and the authorities with facts, was the first step towards the advance of public health. Enquiry into the conditions of public health of a given community leads to the realization of the sanitary needs on national level, and comparisons on international scale can only add to the realization of the state of social welfare, or rather, the ill-health, of one's own environment. To begin with, in Hungary there were not even reliable figures of the size, constitution of the population, and accurate vital statistics, partly because they were not collected at all, and partly because such evidence, as was collected, was not analyzed and published. In the first part of his works Fodor seeks to give a comparative analysis of the two countries based on the evidence of the statistical data: calculation of rates for births and deaths, increase or decrease of the population, etc. He calls attention to the fact that the statistical figures cannot be always regarded as absolute —in case of Hungary he often has to be satisfied with estimates only —and partly because the methods of registration are not uniform in the two countries. In England the still-births were not compulsorily registrable, and often even infants who died before baptism were not registered, thus birth rates and at the same time mortality rates, too, seemed lower than in countries, —including Hungary —where still-births were also included in birth registers. 1 0 (In fact the registration of still-births in England became compulsory only under the Act of 1926). Fodor is equally interested in the mortality rates of the two countries. The comparisons led him to the sad conclusion that infant mortality is twice as high in his country as in England. As regards the classification of deaths he refers to the difficulties which arise from the different registrations of the causes of deaths. (Farr's International List of the Causes of Deaths drawn up after the First Statistical Congress held in Brussels in 1853) was probably not introduced in Hungary at that time, nevertheless he can demonstrate that the mortality rate of the city of Pest as compared to London is extremely high: the rate of deaths caused by tuberculosis is twice as high as in London. (Unfortunately there was in fact hardly any other town in the world that would have preceded the Hungarian capital in this respect in the GO-s of the last century). 4 1 4 0/. Fodor, op. cit., pp. 30—31. 4 1 /. Fodor, op. cit., p. 83.
