Wkład średniowiecza w rozwój zdrowia publicznego
The Contribution of the Middle Ages to the Development of Public Health

Summary/Abstract: The effectiveness of public health activities depends primarily on the level of medicine and the dynamics of its development. However, due to the reference of activities to the community, it is necessary that these activities have a social character, the rank of state activities, and also have a high degree of social acceptance, expressed in the readiness to lead a proper, i.e. healthy, lifestyle by members of community. If we look at the issue from the point of view of the history of public health, we will notice that the necessary conditions for the emergence and development of this field are: (1) consolidation in the social scale of the desire to live not only in the best for health, but also for the longest possible time, (2) institutionalizing the medical profession, (3) institutionalizing the organization of pro-health activities. As long as these three conditions were not met, medicine was applied only to individuals, not to the collective. It is argued in the article that the conditions were met in the late Middle Ages, and only then could the process of the emergence and development of social medicine and public health begin.

• Details
• Contents