Changing concepts of life-saving procedures in 19th century Polish popular first-aid publications

Throughout Europe, before the era of health insurance, access to professional medical help in an emergency was limited, for the vast majority of people, especially for those living outside big cities. This did not improve in the nineteenth century, even though the number of physicians grew rapidly. The industrial revolution added a range of previously unknown threats and, with the dramatic rise in population, many more people could not afford medical help. Therefore, the need for popular, easy-to-understand instructions on first aid became urgent. In Poland, such publications were especially needed because of the country's political situation, which resulted in restricted access to university medical education. During the nineteenth century, approximately 50 works on first aid were published in Polish, with almost 90% addressed to non-physicians. Evaluation of the contents of these books and the instructions which they contained gives a good insight into the evolution that first aid concepts underwent in the nineteenth century. These range from changes in the most urgent threats (from epidemic disorders to industrial accidents and combat injuries) and the accelerating development of medical knowledge (especially the asepsis / antisepsis concept), to the changing spectrum of readers (with growing numbers of those who could read but were otherwise poorly educated).