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Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77.2 (2003) 459



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Andreas Wulf. Der Sozialmediziner Ludwig Teleky (1872-1957) und die Entwicklung der Gewerbehygiene zur Arbeitsmedizin. Mabuse-Verlag Wissenschaft, no. 52. Frankfurt am Main: Mabuse-Verlag, 2001. 539 pp. €37.00, Sw. Fr. 65.00 (paperbound, 3-933050-68-5).

Ludwig Teleky was a noted pioneer of the theory and practice of industrial health. His commitment to social medicine kept clear of eugenics, and he drew on political economy to explain epidemiologic phenomena such as socioeconomic and gender inequalities. His political sympathies were on the left. He combined a position as state occupational health physician in Düsseldorf with teaching at the West German Academy for Social Hygiene until 1933. Andreas Wulf here focuses on Teleky's period in Weimar Germany, when his professional reputation was considerable. There is far less on his early career in Vienna (as this has been analyzed by Hubenstorf) 1, or on his time in the United States. Wulf outlines Teleky's contributions to the analysis of specific industrial hazards, to occupational health legislation, and to his role in preventing industrial medicine from becoming excessively scientized. Although Teleky's international significance is brought out, the International Labour Office archives would have given us a stronger sense of his achievements and of his status in international networks.

In 1933 Teleky was expelled from Germany by the Nazis. He attempted to emigrate to Britain, but language, his relatively advanced age (sixty-two), and his academic style all posed problems. He moved back to Austria, where he found only modest employment. In 1938 colleagues in America found him a position in Illinois, but the U.S. immigration service was not disposed to grant him a visa. Eventually he did manage to emigrate, but he did not find stable and satisfying employment. He turned instead to the history of medicine and produced his classic history of factory and mine hygiene, which criticized the inadequate training of American factory inspectors, as well as their low status and weak position. After the war he was unsuccessful in negotiating a return to Germany—perhaps because the authorities were interested in transplanting an American model of public health rather than resurrecting the more politicized aspects of Weimar social medicine. Teleky died in New York in 1957; ironically, his period in the United States was longer than his fruitful engagement with German industrial medicine.

 



Paul Weindling
Oxford Brookes University

Notes

1. Michael Hubenstorf, Soziale Medizin in Österreich 1890-1914. Disziplingenese und wissenschaftliche Innovation (Husum: Matthiesen Verlag, in press).

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