[Medical press in Poland in the years 1945-1949]

In the article was presented a development of Polish medical press in the years 1945-1949. A special attention is drawn by time turning point, which was set up by the Author. A year 1945 is not only the time of the end of World War II and the beginning of consecutive stage of the history, but also is the moment of establishing new scientific institutions, among others--Scientific and Publishing Department at Ministry of Health, which was to protect the remaining scientific output and develop it. A final time turning point--a year 1949--is not only a period of slow elimination of relative democratic privileges, but also is the time of decadent publishing activity of several medical periodicals that were independent of health department. Finally, it is also the beginning of edition 'Słuzba Zdrowia' ['Health Service']--a popular medical weekly magazine, the limb of ZZPSZ, a journal, which was completely subordinated to dictatorship of contemporary political system. In the paper was included an analysis of 9 titles of popular medical periodicals that were issued in the above-mentioned period. A choice of them was intended, because in this kind of magazines the Author could find the answers for the following questions--to what extent in the columns of medical journals one could observe the liberty of authors' opinions and what views concerned the freedom, what one can say about the development of scientific section and the subject matter of discussed issues, how the problems were presented and what said about contacts and cooperation of Polish doctors with foreign countries. Therefore, in the article were discussed first projects and publishing programs prepared by Scientific and Publishing Department. There was also presented chronologically an origin, development and--often--decline of succeeding popular medical periodicals' titles. A special attention was paid to the social issues of medical circles that can turn out to be extremely interesting for the present-day reader and to the scientific section, in which one could find a review of medical bibliography that in those days made it possible to publish the summaries of Western scientific bibliography.