[Public health and medicine--a leading article by Friedrich Oesterlen in 1860]

The position of hygiene in medicine before the foundation of the first hygienic institute in Germany (1865) is supported by extracts from the leading article of the review "Zeitschrift für Hygiene, medizinische Statistik und Sanitätspolizei". In the following, some sections of this article will be joined, going a very topical evidence.