Original scientific paper
Occupational hygiene as a science in the frame of biology
Vale Vouk
Abstract
Occupational Hygiene being one of the most important parts of the .general Science of Health belongs, in the first line, to the constructive or conservative medicine (Štampar), some scientists (Rorhaix-Sidallan-Soller) consider Hygiene as a science on relations between man and his environment; other (M. Rosenau) understand that Hygiene is only the preventive medicine aiming to prevent and eliminate the causes of diseases, whilst the relations between a healthy or an ill man and their environment and environmental factors (water, air, soil, food etc.) belong Sanitary Science (Sanitation). The latter includes Industrial Hygiene as the most important branch of Occupational Hygiene. Thus in medicine, and medical sciences respectively, there is no agreement on the position of the science called Hygiene. This is mostly due to the fact that modern medicine when building up its system of sciences starts from the diseased organism. In this connection it should be pointed out that the medical science as a whole lacks a unified system of sciences based on logical promises. The medical science branches according to its practical application having in view as objects of research either particular diseased organs or groups of such organs (medicine, urology, Iaryngology, stomatology, neurology etc.), or methods of treatment (surgery, orthopedics, radiology, serology, balneology etc.). Owing to the variety of principles, overlapping of branches occurs very often. Hygiene, as a »synthetice science, although still too much under influence of the idea of noxious factors, is the only one which starts its investigations from the healthy man, i. e. from the biological point of view. Health means, - according to Aschhof, - -securing of the biological, or more correctly, of the biotical existence of man; furthermore, a healthy organism is that one which possesses full capacity of adapting itself to natural changes of life conditions. Contrary to this, illness, - according to Aschhof, - is a general disorder and disturbance of life manifestations which threaten the biotical existence. Thus Aschhof, who is considered an authority in medicine, stands completely on the biological side when evaluating relations between illness and health, a subject which has often been discussed. This induces us to examine Hygiene as a science from the point of view of biology, and try to determine its place tin the system of biological sciences.
According to the latest general system of bilogical sciences (Vouk) we distinguish in biology the following sciences:
1. organic sciences which are literally organs of biology (such as morphology, genetics, physiology, ecology, horology, chronology);
2. synorganic sciences which connect two or more standpoints of organic sciences such as geobotany, phylogeny, mechanics of development, organography and others;
3. holomeric sciences which are, in fact, parts o:f the whole biological science and investigate particular groups or even particular parts of an organism in view of the biological science as a whole, e. g. botany, zoology, anthropology, bacteriology, mycology, entomology etc; further cytology, histology and patobiology which studies only the diseased parts of organism from the point of view of all organic sciences;
4. methodological sciences which deal with the methods of investigation (experimental biology, comparative anatomy, systematics etc.):
If we try to find in the above three-dimensional system of biological sciences the place of the medical science we may differentiate:
1. pathobiology as a holomeric science researching on diseased organisms from all points of view of biological .sciences (pathomorphology, pathophysiology, pathoecology, pathogenetics etc.); and
2. hygiobioIogy which is the biology of a healthy and normal man, and is in biology called anthropology, or more correctly, anthropobiology.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
189341
URI
Publication date:
20.12.1950.
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