ACTA HISTORIAE MEDICINAE STOMATOLOGIAE PHARMACIAE MEDICINAE VETERINARIAE
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Publisher: Scientific Society for the History of Health Culture, Belgrade
ISSN 0352-7840 (print)
ISSN 2466-2925 (online)
UDK 61+615+616.31+619(091)
DOI 10.25106/ahm
Frequency: biannual
The journal Acta Historiae is an open access (CC BY) external double-blind peer reviewed academic periodical; every manuscript is evaluated by two independent experts on the subject matter. The journal publishes original scientific articles, review articles, short scientific articles, reviews and bibliographies from fields of history of medicine, medical deontology, history of mentality, private life, urban and rural everyday life and living conditions, structure of urban and rural settlements, history, demography, boundaries, as well as the history of architecture and urban planning in the context of history, culture and health care institutions.
The first issue of the journal was published in 1961 and for three decades it was one of the most modern, open and dynamic Yugoslavian journals.
The journal is also available on the Copernicus and CEEOL databases.
Editor in chief is prof. dr Nikola Samardžić
Pages
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- Salazarism, Motherhood and Child Healthcare
- Summary/Abstract: During Salazar’s Estado Novo, Portuguese health policies were a reflex of general policies of the dictatorial regime. The crisis during World War II and the 1958’s electoral storm, improved the development of the state’s health sector. However, in the mother and child healthcare field, the regime’s ideology was not consistent with its political practice. Ideologically, the Estado Novo assumed a natalist, conservative and catholic position, condemned abortion, contraception and the woman’s work outside the home. The Portuguese women, single or married, should be confined to domestic work. For moral and economic reasons, the regime defended home birth, in a minimalist conception of healthcare. Medically assisted births, in hospitals, were mainly provided to mothers for families of low income or problematic births. This self– proclaimed family defender, Salazar’s Estado Novo revealed a considerable disinterest and lack of investment in mother and child healthcare, evidenced by statistical and budgetary sources. Both the lack of interest and policies are, also, documented by the high child and maternal mortality rates, two of the highest European indicators at this level. In fact, the health sector was always depending on donations for charity and private organizations, although the regime proclaimed its focus on mother and child healthcare. These political options as well as the high mortality rates attest the misleading propaganda of a family defender regime. In the sixties, political, social and mentality changes, that occurred in Portugal, forced a more dominant position of the state in the health sector. However, the state’srole in mother and child healthcare sector remained poor. Mother and child healthcare still depending on private institutions, essentially from charity.
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- Sanitary Policy of Habsburg Monarchy and Organization of Paraćin Quarantine in 18th Century
- Summary/Abstract: Aft er establishment of administration in newly acquired provinces at southeast of Europe, because of frequent plague epidemics Habsburg Monarchy formed a sanitary safety belt at the border with Ottoman Empire. Th is paper will describe measures taken at Paraćin quarantine that, in the period 1718–1739 used to be one of the busiest. Organization of the quarantine, procedures and instructions sent by Royal court commission were aimed at preventive actions to protect population health.
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- Scandinavian Anthropology, Eugenics, and the Post-Colonial Geneticization of Sami Culture
- Summary/Abstract: Multidisciplinary Swedish/Sami religious reformer Lars Levi Laestadius, played a defining role in the medicalization of Sami and Swedish national identity in the development of colonial science in Scandinavia. Promoting a gendered concept of ‘nervousness’ inherent in Sami blood, a succession of eugenicists then popularized psychiatric theories of Sami inferiority late into the twentieth century. The ideologies emerged after a group of Sami Laestadians in Kautokeino, Norway murdered representatives of the government in 1852 in a revolt against trade practices and restrictions on reindeer herding. The hereditarian view of Sami mentality associated with female sexuality eventually led to the sterilization of Sami women and expanded medical research on Sami people. In transnational colonial experience, a cultural crisis was created among the Sami diaspora in North America. Emigrating to the United States and Canada in a mass migration between 1860 and 1920 to escape poverty, racism, and practice Laestadianism freely, Sami descendants are now reclaiming their indigenous identity. However, bio-identification through mtDNA as marketed by the current commercial genomics industry to those Sami assimilated into Scandinavian immigrant communities in North America may re-stigmatize the Sami as a collective. This article examines historical continuity between Swedish colonial medicine and contemporary eugenics impacting the Sami and argues a new cross-cultural scientific approach to major psychoses is required in psychiatry.
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- Significance of the Architect Stanko Kliska for the Improvement of Health Culture in Belgrade during the Period after the Second World War
- Summary/Abstract: The architect Stanko Kliska (Snagovo, Bosnia, September 15th 1896 – Belgrade, October 3rd 1969) is a representative of the generation of young intellectuals adopting the Yugoslav idea. His creative work between the two world wars is connected to the city of Zagreb. World War II interrupts Zagreb period of his independent and very successful activity in this city and brings him as a refugee to Belgrade where he stays with his family to live and work till the end of his life. Aft er the public competition in 1950, Stanko Kliska was elected for the associate professor of the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade, in the subject Social buildings. He takes over lecturing in the group of the professor D. Leko about medical buildings and manages practical work in the same field. With his work Influence of patients’ room on the development of modern hospital he becomes full professor in 1957 in the subject Design of medical buildings, when he was appointed the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade. Belgrade period in the work of Stanko Kliska is characterized by numerous projects, some of them realized and some again not. Between them are distinguished: Sanatorium of FNRJ Government (Belgrade 1947-1949); Draft Master Plan and program draft for the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade (1952); Clinic of Gynecology and Obstetrics in Belgrade (1949–1956); General hospital in Zenica (1950); General hospital in Tuzla (1956), etc. His competence, professional courage, consistency and modesty where the reason why he was accepted in Belgrade as a respected architect and professor of the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade. Kliska died in 1969 in Belgrade, and three days later was buried in Mirogoj cemetery, Zagreb.
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- Symposium on the History of Health Sciences
- Summary/Abstract: In the last week of October 2016, Pharmacy Museum in Lisbon hosted threeday Symposium on the History of Health Sciences: Phármakon. ‘From the Combat of infi rmity to the invention of immortality’ (Congresso de História das Ciências da Saúde: Phármakon. Do combato da enfermidade à invençao da imortalidade). It is one of the most distinguished cultural institutions of Lisbon located in Alfama district, renowned for their impressive collection of artefacts related to 50 centuries of history of pharmacy in civilizations from Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Rome, Greece, Islam, South America, China, Tibet, Japan, Africa to Modern Europe. Symposium was organized by Prometheus Institute from Lisbon in collaboration with several prominent scientifi c and academic university institutions from Portugal: Instituto IPAEHI – Associação para Estudos Históricos Interdisciplinares, CIDH-Cátedra Infante Dom Henrique Para os Estudos Insulares Atlânticos e a Globalização at University of Alberta, CITCEM-Transdisciplinary Research Cenre/Centro de Investigação Interdisciplinar, CLEPUL-Research Centre of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon/Centro de Literaturas e Culturas Lusófonas e Europeias da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, National Pharmacy Association and Pharmacy Museum, and IECC PMA − Instituto Europeu de Ciências da Cultura Padre Manuel Antunes. Unconventional, but nonetheless attractive idea of the organizers was to host an interdisciplinary symposium based on primarily thorough historical research of participants, and to encompass overall humanities (and arts) and social sciences medical debates on the health sciences. It was a resounding success.
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- THE TYPHUS EPIDEMIC IN SERBIA IN 1915
- Summary/Abstract: The checked typhus epidemic broke out in Serbia in late 1914 and soon spread to most parts of the country. Faced with a shortage of doctors and medical equipment, the Serbian government turned to allied and neutral countries for help.Doctors, even entire medical missions, from various European countries, especially from the United Kingdom and France, started coming. The enormous number of victims, among soldiers and Austro-Hungarian prisoners, as well as among the civilian population, revealed the dimension of the epidemic. Th e fear that the typhus would affect other European countries, even the United States, started to settle in. In March 1915, in order to prevent the spread of the disease across the borders of the Kingdom of Serbia, among other things, the American Red Cross and the Rockefeller Foundation, with the help of Serbs who lived in America, set up a special medical commission led by Dr Richard Strong, a well-known epidemiologist. Th e mission arrived to Serbia in early April and successfully coordinated the fight against typhus in cooperation with already present missions. In that sense, Strong was one of the most credited doctors in eradicating the disease. According to the estimates at the time, typhus took around 150,000 lives.
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- THE WILLS OF DALMATIAN PHYSICIANS AND THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS FROM 14TH AND FIRST DECADE OF 15TH CENTURY
- Summary/Abstract: The paper analyzes ten wills of Dalmatian physicians and their family members from 14th and fi rst decade of 15th century that were preserved in State archive in Zadar and State archive in Dubrovnik. Physician’s wills are valuable source forstudy of different aspects of social life within communities, but also produce certain insights important for history of science and medicine. Content of those wills enables apprehension of social and material status of physicians and their family members and purposes for which they directed their assets. At the same time, it is possible to notice that physicians, as did other citizens of that time, followed socially acceptable form in distribution of estate. Authors in the paper also analyzed part of inventory of Šibenik physician Antun from Spilimberg regarding the list of important medical books mentioned physician possessed, for they witness that such medical literature was present in libraries of certain physicians and was used in Dalmatian communities.
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- The Appearance of Plague in Two Minority Communities
- Summary/Abstract: Throughout centuries, plague was the most dreaded disease that scourged humankind. The emotional and psychological imprint of its consequences left considerable evidences in arts, literature, music, film and even general consciousness. In this paper, however, we are concerned with the response of authorities to the occurrence of this disease by studying two examples of plague outbreak – one in Hungary in the early 1700’s and another in Hawaii at the tail end of 1800’s. The temporal and spatial distance between two observed examples is used to underline the similarity of governmental attitudes toward affected minority communities, especially those considered responsible for the plague outbreak. Besides literature which addresses the subject, the collection of the 18th century sources from archives of Court War Council and Court Chamber in Vienna, as well as sources from Hungarian archives, were used.
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- The Portuguese Health Service in World War One
- Summary/Abstract: This article aims to shed light on the Portuguese army’s medical organization and action during World War One, and will be divided into three chapters. The first one presents a global context about Portuguese belligerency and how the Health Service worked during the war. The second chapter, describes the Service’s organization as well as its inherent difficulties to provide support to the troops in the operational theatre. In the third chapter, one can find a state of the art about the theme in study, specifically comprised of a panoply of texts and books written about health issues related to Portuguese belligerency in World War One.
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- The Role of Metropolitan Stefan Stratimirović in Health Care Education of Serbs in the Habsburg Monarchy
- Summary/Abstract: Cooperation between the state and metropolinate of Karlovci in overcoming various problems that affected Serbs in the 18th century was known throughout the century. It was visible in the process of building awareness on epidemics, for in those periods the Church tried, either on its own or stimulated by the State, to support measures in fighting epidemics. Although many serious problems were encountered in that process, the metropolitan Stefan Stratimirović (1790–1836) never failed to support all state attempts to improve health conditions and awareness of his congregation, and for that reason during epidemics he occasionally deviated from accepted practice of the church he was leading. He propagated vaccination against smallpox for children, actively participated in furnishing temporary hospitals in war times and in restraining spreading of cholera, the disease that with its death toll replaced plague epidemics. This paper indicates significance of metropolitan Stratimirović in health care education of Serbs.
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- The Tyranny of the Future
- Summary/Abstract: Th is article discusses G. K. Chesterton’s criticism of eugenic programmes and rationalities in his essay Eugenics and other Evils, originally published in 1922. Th e fi rst part of the paper presents Chesterton’s analysis of central eugenic arguments, whose inner contradictions and lack of logical consistency he examines from both a humorous and a clear-sighted perceptive. Chesterton is additionally interested in the social driving forces and political benefi ciaries of eugenic programmes, and argues that they were mainly used to control the workers and the poor. In the second part, I show that Chesterton’s critical analysis of eugenic practices at the beginning of the 20th century contains important insights that can be fruitfully harnessed for the current debate on the social impact of genetic and reproductive technologies. Th e last prat of the paper highlights some important continuities and breaks between eugenics in the past and current practices in reproductive medicine and human genetics.
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- The Usage of Water in Personal Hygiene in Medieval Serbia
- Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to show the history of personal hygiene in medieval Serbia. The everyday use of water in personal hygiene (washing of one’s face, hands and feet, bathing, laundry) is documented in medical writings, archaeological findings and visual art. There is a suppression of public baths during the Middle Ages, but the emergence of private baths is evident, along with arrangement of spas (public baths) at thermal sources.