[Institutionalisation and professionalisation of (occupational) medicine in Germany]

In the first tierce of XIX century the necessity of steps for the health care of working people on the side of medicine and also of the state was perceived. The claims for the producing of the appropriate structural and coneptional conditions led to the creation of work medicine as a sphere, that developed in Germany in relation to political values, social-political programs and medical models. An acknowledgement gained such conception of work medicine and less on the medical work prevention. The notion of work medicine was related with the insurance system from 1883/84 against the unlucky accidents and diseases. The process of institutionalisation and professionalisation of medicine in Germany from the beginning was formed by coexistence of different sociological sciences and mixture of various groups of interest, intending an influence on the form of both processes. This constelation caused a sluggish and slow progress. For example astonishing is the time needed by the work medicine for its stabilisation as a knowledge at the universities. We may go out from presupposition, that the broadening of the industrial production brings chances to this part of medicine having interest in negative consequences of this progress for the human health. However the university teachers regarded the work medicine existed on the edge of medical sciences till the time after the second world war. The progress came thanks to the impulses of single physicians, who beginning in 7-years of the XVIII century published increasing amounts of papers on the work medicine (handicraft and industrial hygiene). Some organizations were created whose interests concerned the work health damaging aspects. A special role had the German Society of Handicraft-Industrial Hygiene, founded in 1922.