ON WEATHER, MEDICINE AND A WEATHER STAND: A HISTORY ECHOING INTO THE PRESENT

Abstract

Stimulated by an increase in the number of reports on heat-related mortality in August 2003, we wanted to show the role and significance of weather-related factors in medical practice throughout the history. Climatic factors were incorporated in main medical concepts such humoral, miasmatic, or constitutional; they were applied in therapeutical approaches and in the formation of some medical disciplines only to end up discarded in favour of evidence-based medicine. Here we deal with typical examples, significant for Croatia, with an emphasis on a weather stand? set up by Adolf Holzer (1834–1885), a military and spa physician, in Zagreb in 1884.