Dr Avelin Roblek, city physician in Bjelovar and Ljubljana

This paper presents the public health work of Dr Avelin Roblek (1845–1889) through his professional path as a city physician in Bjelovar and Ljubljana, within the framework of medicine in our region at the end of the 19th century. Dr Roblek graduated from the medical faculty in Graz in 1874, after which he worked in Ljubljana and for three years in Litija. From 1882 to 1888, he served as the city physician and primary physician of the county hospital in Bjelovar and then, until his untimely death, the city physician in Ljubljana. The functions of the city physician in the second half of the 19th century in the then Austrian Empire were mostly public health: anti-epidemic measures, vaccinations, examinations and sanitary inspections of living conditions, control of prostitutes, coroners, and forensic autopsies, and control of the work of midwives and coroners. Dr Roblek regularly reported on the functions and the measures he implemented to the city magistrates in Bjelovar and Ljubljana. He died in Ljubljana after contracting a disease while performing his work as a physician.