Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

Because General Żeligowski’s troops occupied Vilnius in the autumn of 1920 and Poland annexed it two years later, the health-care system that operated in Poland at the time began to be introduced in the city and the region. The official guidelines for health policy in Poland derived from the concept of hygiene proposed by Tomasz Janiszewski, the founder of the health system in the country, which focused on social hygiene. Universities played an advisory role in the Polish health system and were involved in educating the public on hygiene issues. In interwar Vilnius, the most prominent figure in this field was Janina Bortkiewicz-Rodziewiczowa, a researcher and senior assistant in the Department of Hygiene of the Faculty of Medicine at Stephen Bathory University. This article analyses her publications aimed at promoting science. It examines the means by which Bortkiewicz-Rodziewiczowa conveyed specific medical knowledge to a lay audience. It also discusses what topics she emphasised most and what reasons led to her choices, and how this correlated with priorities in medical science and health policy at that time. Finally, it touches on an interesting practical aspect, namely what public education strategies applied at the time can still be applied today.

The article presents the discourse of folk medicine concepts in contexts of historicity, the social environment, and scientificity category interfaces. One of the essential features of folk medicine is its intra-disciplinary nature, necessitating basing the already-mentioned categories on a context analysis of theoretical and practical approaches to folk medicine. The article consists of four parts, which correspond to the approaches of discourse analysis on the concept of folk medicine. The first part presents the anthropological evaluation of folk medicine approaches to the social environment, historicity and scientificity. The second part highlights the context of the historicity of folk medicine, which raises the question whether folk medicine is an endangered legacy or a changing tradition? The third part analyses the expression of folk medicine in approaches to the coverage of the social environment: from village to city, from nation to humanity. The fourth part leads to an evaluation of the interfaces between folk medicine and scientificity as a problem of rationality/irrationality. In conclusion, it is emphasised that by presenting the discourse of folk medicine concepts in the already-mentioned segments (social environment, historicity, scientificity), folk medicine’s theoretical and practical expression is evaluated in contexts of today’s and past experiences.

The purpose of the article is to present a discourse of public health ethics, as a social action, and research development. The following problematic questions have been framed to achieve the above purpose: what are the reasons for multiple meanings of public health concept? How is the concept of public in the context of pubic health understood? What are the possible approaches to the analysis of public health ethics? What are the major differences between public health ethics and healthcare ethics? The first part of the article makes an analysis of multiple meanings of the concept of public health. The second part addresses the concept of public in the context of public health. In the third part, there are analytical approaches to public health ethics reflected (professional ethics, applied ethics, representation ethics, critical ethics). The fourth part of the article focuses on differences between public health ethics and healthcare ethics. A summarising historical discourse on the development of public health ethics reveals the dynamics of theoretical approaches to the purpose of the article.

In the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, an opposition between official medicine and folk medicine, partly based on ethnic aspects, formed in Lithuania. The article analyses the alternation in the ‘self-other’ opposition in the choice of treatment. Folk medicine traditions existed alongside standard medicine in the town of Aukštadvaris, which was characterised as multi-confessional in the first half of the 20th century (despite the tensions, Lithuanians, Poles, Jews and Tartars lived together harmoniously). Faith healers with extraordinary qualities or powers were classified as ‘other’. So the choice of treatment reveals two aspects: the concept of ethnicity, and mythical perception (when dealing with those engaged in other activities). Studies have shown that in a disaster or illness, the ‘self-other’ opposition declines. An opposition between official medicine and folk medicine did not form in the Aukštadvaris area.

Recently, health-related quality of life has become one of the main underlying assumptions for public health practice, especially for gaining insights into highly complex health problems that are mainly determined by social factors. Children’s health is highly determined by social factors, especially those in the family environment. We follow a newly emerging trend to investigate health-related quality of life within a family-centered social system instead of individualistic approach; therefore, we chose KIDSCREEN52 questionnaire. We consider KIDSCREEN52 questionnaire significant for public health practice.