Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945

“Like Yeast in Fermentation”: Public Health in Interwar Yugoslavia

194 Željko Dugac health system served as an example to other national systems. This was before theturbulentendofthedecade,whenŠtamparlosthisposition,KingAleksandar Karađorđević (1888–1934) became a dictator and the world was shaken by economic and political crises. An important aspect of this success was the founding of the Ministry of Public Health and its socio-medical institutions and the ideology of the social medicine movement in Yugoslavia. Indeed, the activities of such key institutions and the formation of professions engaged in healtheducationandsanitaryengineeringweremethodsofgreatsocialimpact within society. There is a rich literature on the broader frame of interwar public health and social medicine in Europe and beyond and a growing interest in comparative national studies on these topics.2 The present chapter contributes to this field by offering an empirical description of the construction of public health, its ideological orientation and the programs to which it gave rise. The Foundation of the Ministry of Public Health Although Croatia and Slovenia had more experience in organizing public health systems because they were longer under the influence of Habsburg sanitary regime than any other Balkan countries, it was in the Kingdom Archival Centre in New York for financial support and permission to use their archives. I also want to thank the Dugac family for financial support during the preparation of this chapter. For a detailed discussion of opposition to the public health programs of Andrija Štampar, initially from private practitioners whose interests were challenged by the socialization of medicine, the intrigues of the Belgrade nationalist physicians and, finally, by the confrontation between the predominantly pro-Serb state and Štampar in the 1930s see: Željko Dugac, “New Public Health for a New State: Interwar Public Health in the Kingdom of Serbs,Croats,andSlovenesandtheRockefellerFoundation,”inIrisBorowyandWolfGruner,eds.,FacingIllness in Troubled Times: Health in Europe in the Interwar Years (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2005), 277–304. See also Željko Dugac, Protiv bolesti i neznanja: Rockefellerova fondacija u međuratnoj Jugoslaviji (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2005); “Zbor liječnika, Andrija Štampar i javnozdravstvena politika u Kraljevini Srba Hrvata i Slovenaca-Kraljevini Jugoslaviji ,” Liječnički vjesnik, 127 (2005): 151–157; Željko Dugac and Marko Pećina, eds., The Diaries of Andrija Štampar 1931-1938 (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2008) will additionally illuminate these conflicts. 2 See Paul Weindling, “Introduction: Constructing International Health between the Wars,” in Paul Weindling, ed., International Health Organisations and Movements 1918–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 2; Paul Weindling, “Philanthropy and World Health: The Rockefeller Foundation and the League of Nations Health Organisation,” Minerva 35, 3 (1997): 269–281; Carl Prausnitz, The Teaching of Preventive Medicine in Europe (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 121–140; Ilona Löwy, Patrick Zylberman, “Medicine as a Social Instrument: Rockefeller Foundation, 1913–1945,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31, 3 (2000): 365–379; 73; E. R. Kohler, “A Policy for the Advancement of Science: the Rockefeller Foundation 1924–29,” Minerva 16, 4 (1978): 480–515; Patrick Zylberman, “Fewer Parallels than Antitheses : René Sand and Andrija Štampar on Social Medicine, 1919–1955,” Social History of Medicine 17, 1 (2004): 77–92; and Susan Gross Solomon, Lion Murard, Patrick Zylberman, eds., Shifting Boundaries of Public Health: Europe in the Twentieth Century (New York: University of Rochester Press; 2008). 195 “Like Yeast in Fermentation” of Serbia that an original and important public health development took place.3 In 1879 Dr. Vladan Đorđević (1844–1930), then in charge of the Kingdom’s health sector and one of the first physicians to work on public health within the state administration, obtained parliamentary support for a law on the establishment of a national health fund. By securing financing for the health service, Đorđević not only ensured its creation but also received official recognition for hygiene being a public good that should be advanced by means of state contributions. Importantly, he became aware of the public health work of Milan Jovanović Batut (1847–1940) and subsequently sent the young physician on an overseas study trip between 1882 and 1885. Batut first traveled to the Reichgesundheitsamt in Berlin, where he worked in Robert Koch’s department, then to Munich, studying practical hygiene at the Institute of Hygiene under the famous Max Pettenkofer, and finally to Louis Pasteur in Paris. Batut thus had the opportunity to study in Germany, then the leading nation in modern medicine, as well as with the extremely active French bacteriologists. Upon returning to Serbia, Batut unfortunately...