Essays
https://doi.org/10.21857/y7v64t56ny
Cooperation in the Field of Public Health and Medicine: Instances ofExpert and Knowledge Mobility between Vienna, Zagreb and the Far East
Željko Dugac
; Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Divison for the History and Philosophy of Science, Department of Philosophy of Science, Ante Kovačića 5, Zagreb
Abstract
In this essay the transfer of knowledge and experts between Vienna, Zagreb, inter-war China and the USSR will be analysed through the collaboration between two well-known interwar public health reformers, Aus- trian Julius Tandler and Croat Andrija Štampar. In the 1930s, they worked in China under the auspices of the League of Nations Health Organization and developed intensive cooperation in the field of public health. Based on the diary records of Andrija Štampar and the preserved archival correspondence, their personal
and professional contacts were analysed. The main interest was the exchange of experiences and opinions,
as well as their observations about the people and ideas they encountered and the situations in which they found themselves. This essay also tries to shed some light on the milieu in which the notions of public health and social medicine advanced, as well as the multiple external factors which influenced those developments. However, the opportunities for constructive work in the field of public health grew increasingly slim in the political constellation of the time. The League of Nations was losing its power and its health organisation followed suit. The local resistance to foreign influences in China was becoming progressively intense. The ever more severe unrest led the world into World War II and pushed the establishment of an international public health order to the margins for some time to come. However, what remained in memory was a flow of ideas and experiences which was formed in Central and Southeastern Europe and which subsequently tried to make their way far to the East and develop not only local but also general and international qualities. Many of these ideas became the basis for a new world-wide public health system that developed after World War II.
Keywords
Julius Tandler; Andrija Štampar; China; interwar period; history of medicine; history of public health;
Hrčak ID:
231566
URI
Publication date:
17.12.2019.
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