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The Austrian emperor and the Croat-Hungarian king Franz Joseph I (1830/1848-1916) was the longest-serving ruler of the Habsburg dynasty. Among his properties was Osijek, which since 1809 enjoyed the status of a free royal city. In the period under review, it was the seat of the Virovitica County and the capital of the Kingdom of Slavonia until its incorporation into the Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia after the Croat-Hungarian settlement of 1868. Because of this, Osijek was not only a political, economic and cultural centre but also a health care centre. At the beginning of the reign of Franz Joseph I, two hospitals were operating in it: a military one in the baroque military garrison Tvrđa and a civilian one in New Town. The most significant role in the further development of the Osijek and Slavonian health care was played by the trust established in 1806 from the legacies of innkeeper Johann Kolhoffer, tanner Josef Huttler and Jesuit Cristian Monsperger. Although originally intended for the establishment of an orphanage, due to a number of unfavourable political circumstances, the trust, until then with multiple interests attributed to the principal, came under the administration of the city of Osijek only in 1867. Along with the new orphanage opened in 1874, a new hospital was completed as well in 1868, also with the money from the trust. Huttler-Kohlhoffer-Monsperger Foundation Hospital was the largest and most modern hospital in the Triune Kingdom, and despite later constructions of various hospital wards, its building has remained the most representative building within the Clinical-Hospital Centre Osijek. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ibn Sina, better known to the Western medical historians by his Latin nickname Avicenna, is considered the third most important physician in medical history, along with the Greek physician Hippocrates and the Roman physician Galen. He was born around 980 in Afshona near Bukhara on the Silk Road in present-day Uzbekistan and died in 1037 in Hamadan near Tehran in present-day Iran. Among his greatest contributions to the development of medicine is his work entitled The Canon of Medicine, in which he summarized all the previous medical knowledge, which is why it has been used for centuries as a basic medical textbook. In recent times, in connection with the controversy over the naming of the medieval caliphate medicine, with the aim of formulating an inclusive term, which would not emphasize any involved group to the detriment of the others, paradoxically in the focus of the research of the in it interested historians of medicine, instead of the achievements of the individual doctors from the mentioned era, came the determination of their ethnic and religious affiliation, including Avicenna’s, all the more so because he came from the disputed area of the conflicts between different nations and opposing religions. In doing so, scientific discussions are increasingly joined by the erection of the representative architectural structures in the places related to the individual doctors, one of which is the representative Avicenna Museum in Afshona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plague epidemics have remained in the collective consciousness until nowadays remembered as the deadliest. Therefore, it is not surprising that the answers to them throughout history have been not only medical but also religious. The previously mentioned will be analyzed in this paper through the cults of the protector saints against the plague epidemics that have developed in two Croatian cities of comparable size, Rijeka and Osijek, but with the diametrically opposed geographical positions and, accordingly, quite different historical developments. On the one hand, a more detailed overview of the development of the cults of various saints present in the mentioned cities will be presented. On the other hand, based on their presentation in the sacral heritage of these cities, the broader context of the time and space in which they have developed will be lightened. Particular attention will be paid to their medical connotations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial is dedicated to a commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci near Florence, April 15, 1452 - Cloux Castle, France, May 2, 1519) - the greatest Renaissance artist and one of the greatest artists in general. From his invaluable artistic and scientific heritage, only a small part dedicated to the exploration of the Nature was selected for this occasion. In this part, according to many, the most significant place is dedicated to his anatomical drawings as a lasting testament to his interest in anatomy and medicine in general. Much has been said and written about this topic over the past 500 years. While searching through numerous bibliographic sources, several of the most impressive drawings have been selected for this occasion, with a few short reminiscences, which bear the most impressive testimony to the brilliant mind of the great Leonardo, rightfully called uomo universale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although stethoscope was invented by French physician René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laennec (1781-1826) in 1816, its wider clinical application started only after the publication of his book entitled De l'Auscultation Médiate ou Traité, du Diagnostic des Maladies des Poumons et du Coeur in 1819. Its invention coincided with the development of the 'hospital medicine' in the post-revolutionary Paris during the first quarter of the 19th century. It has enabled then contemporary physicians to explain the correlation between the patient symptoms and the clinical findings and thus has helped the shift from the humoral pathology towards the solitary pathology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis's significance for the history of medicine lies in his discovery of the cause of puerperal fever. He discovered it during his work at the First Obstetrics Clinic of the Vienna's Allgemeines Krankenhaus. Since the mentioned Clinic, led by the doctors, had much higher mortality rates of the child-bearing women than the Second Obstetrics Clinic, led by the midwives, he wanted to determine the causes of such a state. He came to the conclusion that puerperal sepsis was transmitted by the doctors and medical students, who after performing the anatomical sections started to perform the births with their hands beforehand washed only with soap. Semmelweis instead proposed a mandatory hand washing in a potassium-hypochlorite solution thus making the mortality at the First equivalent to the mortality at the Second Obstetrics Clinic. Despite this, his discovery was rejected by the established medical circuits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plague was one of the most deadly epidemic diseases of the Baroque period. Responses to it were not only medical, but religious as well. A good example of the latter is the Most Holy Trinity monument in the city of Osijek, which was in the 18th century the biggest town of the Kingdom of Slavonia and today is the regional centre in the Republic of Croatia. The monument was erected between 1729 and 1730 on the main square of the Osijek military fortress Tvrda by the widow of the General Maksimilijan Petraš who died during the 1728 plague epidemic. Inscription on it implores the mercy of God as a protection against plague. Its foundation could be also interpreted as a part of the Catholic Revival, which was implemented by the Habsburgs in Osijek and Slavonia after their liberation from the Ottomans. But although, on the one hand, it could be interpreted as a symbol of the successful implementation of the Habsburg unifying religious policies due to its strong resemblance with the similar columns throughout the Habsburg Monarchy, on the other hand, it represented a continuation of the theurgic understanding of medicine, which could be interpreted as the failure of the Habsburg enlightened medical policies. Thus the archival documents from the Osijek State Archive together with the Osijek plague column itself were analysed with the aim of explaining the above mentioned ambiguities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emanuel Edward Klein (1844 - 1925) was a British microbiologist of Croatian origin. He was born in Osijek in what is currently the Republic of Croatia and which was then part of the Habsburg Monarchy, he completed his medical studies in Vienna in 1869, and went on to spend his entire career in London. Although trained as an anatomist, embryologist and histologist, his main area of research was microbiology. Due to the fact that back then it was a new and fast developing discipline, he was able to pursue his interests in many directions and make significant discoveries, such as the identification of the ‘Bacillus enteritidis sporogenes’ as a cause of summer hospital diarrhoeas. Although the overwhelming majority of his researches dealt with bacteria which attacked humans, in 1892 he published a book entitled The Etiology and Pathology of Grouse Disease, Fowl Enteritis, and Some Other Diseases Affecting Birds, which revealed the results of his experiments on the bacteria which affected birds. In the context of the general development of the microbiology, this paper tries to give an objective evaluation of this until now widely neglected book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case of a 55 year old male patient, who after hospitalization at the Intensive Care Unit, due to acute renal failure, at first had a central venous catheter inserted through his right subclavian vein, and then a dialysis catheter inserted through his left subclavian vein. A routine X-ray examination confirmed that the central venous catheter was visualised in the expected position of the right atrium, which was reached via superior vena cava. The dialysis catheter was not visualised in the expected position of the right atrium, but in the surprising location of the left ventricle, with its line continuously passing by the left sternal edge instead of crossing the middle line in order to enter the superior vena cava, thus raising a concern over its misplacement and possible side-effects (abstract image photo). Due to the absence of pneumo- or haemato-thorax, as the most common signs of the venous rupture, the possible explanation was an anatomical variation. Dialysis catheter displacement in the left internal thoracic vein was proposed as another possibility. Literature research explained it as a case of double superior vena cava, which was confirmed by analysis of the computerised tomography pulmonary angiogram. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the differences between English and Croatian views of early modem medicine through the respective Renaissance plays. As Renaissance made no particular distinction between arts and sciences, plays of that time provide a very common source of medical narrative. During Renaissance both languages produced high literary achievements, which makes them exemplars among their Germanic and Slavic counterparts, and justifies this comparison, regardless of their significant differences. One should bear in mind that while England was a unified kingdom, with London as the major cultural centre, Croatia's division among the neighbouring powers produced several prominent cultural centres such as Zadar, Šibenik, Split, Hvar, Korčula, and the most important one, Dubrovnik. One should also bear in mind that the golden age of Croatian Renaissance plays had finished as early as 1567 with the death of Marin Držić, before it even started in England with the foundation of the first permanent theatrical companies in 1576. Along these lines, this paper compares their early modern attitudes toward medicine in general and men and women practitioners in particular. In this respect, it evaluates the influences of the origin, patronage, and religion of their authors. Special attention is given to William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Marin Držić (1508-1567) as the exemplars of English and Croatian Renaissance literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emanuel Edward Klein (Osijek, 1844 - Hove, 1925) was a British microbiologist of Croatian origin. He completed his medical studies in Vienna in 1869. In 1869 he was sent to England to determine terms for the translation of Samuel Stricker's manual Handbuch von den Geweben des Menchen und der Tiere. During his visit he made a good impression on John Burdon Sanderson and John Simon, which was the main reason why he was invited to London in 1871 to conduct investigations under their guidance. In 1873 Klein began his collaboration with the Saint Bartholomew's Hospital, where he was appointed as a Joint Professor of General Anatomy and Physiology. His researches were in the fields of anatomy, histology, pathology, embryology, physiology, and especially microbiology. He did a great deal to its development in Britain. He has written about 260 scientific papers on a broad range of different topics. Despite all the aforementioned facts, his work was never properly studied, and he is almost unknown outside academic circles. For that reason, attitudes towards him still range between the extremes of calling him the father of British microbiology on one side, and attributing him as a diligent and industrious plodder on the other. In this paper we will try to prove the first attitude. We will put his researches in a general context. Finally we will highlight his original achievements in the isolation of new microbes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new Appendix A of the European Convention for the Protection of Vertebrate Animals Used for Experimental and Other Scientific Purposes, which gives guidelines for accommodation and care of animals and was approved on June 15, 2006, was the main reason the authors decided to investigate the origins of the regulations of animal experiments. Although one might assume that the regulation had its origin in the United Nations conventions, the truth is that its origins are a hundred years old. The authors present a case of the nineteenth-century vivisection controversy brought about by the publication of the Handbook for the Physiological Laboratory in 1873, in which John Burdon-Sanderson, Emanuel Edward Klein, Michael Foster, and Thomas Lauder Brunton described a series of vivisection experiments they performed on animals for research purposes. It was the first case of vivisection to be examined, processed, and condemned for inhuman behavior toward animals before an official body, leading to enactment of the Cruelty to Animals Act in 1876. The case reveals a specific ethos of science in the second half of the nineteenth century, which was characterized by a deep commitment of scientists to the scientific enterprise and their strong belief that science could solve social problems, combined with an overt insensitivity to the suffering of experimental animals. The central figure in the case was Emanuel Edward Klein, a disciple of the Central European medical tradition (Vienna Medical School) and a direct follower of the experimental school of Brücke, Stricker, Magendie, and Bernard. Because of his undisguised attitudes and opinions on the use of vivisection, Klein became a paradigm of the new scientific identity, strongly influencing the stereotypic image of a scientist, and polarizing the public opinion on vivisection in England in the nineteenth century and for some considerable time afterward. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]