PROCES INSTITUCIONALIZACIJE HRVATSKE MEDICINE DO PRVOGA SVJETSKOG RATA

Abstract

Unfavourable socioeconomic and political conditions delayed stronger development of medicine in Croatia until the last decades of the 19th century and the turn of the 20th century. This relatively short period saw the establishment of a number of key healthcare institutions such as the institute for smallpox vaccine production, department of bacteriology and hygiene, tuberculosis sanatorium, paediatric outpatient clinic, emergency medical facility, and dissection facility. Hospitals became centres of medical research and started to develop specific clinical professions. New medical associations saw the light of day [Sbor liečnika kr. Hrvatske i Slavonije (Association of Physicians of the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia) in Zagreb and Družtvo slavonskih liečnika (Society of Physicians of Slavonia) in Osijek] and started their own bulletins Liečnički viestnik and Glasnik Družtva slavonskoh liečnika, respectively. Medical training was then provided by a midwifery school and a university school of pharmacy, while the Austrian government discouraged medical studies at the local level for decades, as it feared it would create a new class of free-thinking intellectuals. Those times also saw the first welfare institutions. Croatia was not producing pharmaceuticals at the time, but there was a new factory producing medical instruments, orthopaedic devices, and bandages.