[Public health care in Poland in the Prussian Sector]

Modernization processes in modern European countries, characterised by the development of contemporary organisational structures, have led to a wider range of public health and hygiene activities. New, developing ideas of public health care demonstrated the need for competent institutions, operating within national government and administration structures, capable of preventing mass epidemics and of eliminating factors from the external environment which area danger to health. These attempts were fulfilled in the beginning of the 19th century. The Prussian state and then united German empire was, at that time, a classical example for the effective organisation of self-governed public health care organisations. In the Prussian sector, public health care matters were governed by the boards of provincial, regional and district authorities. In this sector public health care was also the responsibility of sanitary commissions, which were a continuation of the earlier, so called, medical police forces. The studies devoted to the issue formulated in the title show that within the three-sector scale in partitioned Poland, the Prussian sector could serve as an example of optimal systemic solutions, not only for self-governed health care, but also for a health insurance system. These concepts were the basis for the model of public health care after 1918, in the Public state liberated from its oppressors.