Experts and the Modernization of the Nation: The Arena of Public Health in Poland in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Experts and the Modernization of the Nation: The Arena of Public Health in Poland in the First Half of the Twentieth Century The article examines the emergence of the public health system in the newly formed Polish state from 1918 onwards and the discourses that accompanied this process from an institutional and actorcentered perspective. The Polish health system was not a mere replica of western models, but a highly complex, innovative and dynamic system. Among other things, this is reflected in the founding of an independent Ministry of Health and the State Institute of Hygiene in 1918. Medical and hygiene experts who were trained abroad and part of international health networks such as Ludwik Hirszfeld, Ludwik Rajchman, or Kazimierz Funk transferred their knowledge to Poland and translated it into the specific constellation of space and time in the new nation state. Immediately after the war, Poland was confronted with epidemics that were spreading across Eastern Europe. Later, it was concerned with providing a hygienic infrastructure and creating a healthy and able-bodied population for the country which felt a constant threat from its neighbors Germany and Russia. Public health followed not only functional requirements, but also served political and ideological ends in enhancing social and ethnic cohesion and building the national identity of a “healthy” and “strong” population. In Poland, as in other counties, public health was an arena in which highly relevant political issues were negotiated.