The State of Research on Hospitals in Poland Before the Partitions

The state of research on hospitals in Poland before the partitions is characterized by two directions of research conducted by two groups of historians: historians of medicine who analyse the problem as an element of medical attention, and professional historians studying hospitals or the network of hospital care in general from its institutional side. Studies of the social influence of the hospital are very rare. The problem only recently was taken up by historians. A further progress of the research shows that there is an urgent need of starting wide interdisciplinary studies not only on hospitals but even on the broadly understood problem of charity. Up till now the variety of directions of research has resulted in a considerable number of contributions but there have been only few comprehensive monographical papers. Hence there is still no summary of the results achieved so far, a uniform research method has not yet been worked out; and first of all there is still no large scale research programme