[Public health of county Tolna in the 18th century]

The history of the plague in the 18th century Hungary had two main periods: for the first the defense, while for the second the prophylaxy was the characteristic. During the epidemics of the years 1708-1715 the losses caused by the illness were five times bigger, than those caused by the war of independence (1703-1711). When the Serbs, fighting on the side of the Hapsburgs, had overcome Hungarian troops, created a cordon militaire along the Danube on the borders of county Tolna, which proved to be so efficient, that plague could cross the river only as late as in 1709. At the time of the epidemics of the years 1739-1740 the cordon solitaire was already less effective, since people forced by hunger and fear crossed it several times, even by the help of the personnel responsible for it. The plague broke out in 1739 in the village Kajdács. The village however was so isolated, that the county got the first informations only one month later. The plague was spreading rapidly in the triangle made by rivers Sárviz and Kapos, inhabited mostly by German colonists. The surgeon-in-chief sent by the authorities to the place refused to do his duty. The majority of victims died in the bigger market towns: in Földvár 366, while in Paks 845 dead were registered. The county employed a plague-surgeon from Pest only when the plague had been already over. The county suffered severe losses: 3397 people-ca. 6.1 percent of its population has been lost. In the following period several county-physicians were employed and charged with special tasks. From 1734 county Fejér or Baranya and Tolna employed a common physician. The first physician in the county was called Queisar-he lived in Pécs. The county could employ a physician on its own, a certain Jakob Keller, only from 1769. Keller organized the work of surgeons and midwives according to the regulation of he Generale Normativum Sanitatis issued by the royal court. After grounding of the medical faculty in Buda and later in Pest (1769) surgeons had been thoroughly examined before they were allowed to be employed by a county. The first physicians merely living from their praxis, appeared in the county only in the 90th years of the century, exclusively at noblemen's courts.