Maria Theresia i zdravstvene reforme u Bjelovaru
Maria Theresa and Health Reforms in Bjelovar

Summary/Abstract: The subject matter is Maria Theresa's policy oriented towards health reforms and positive demography across the Danube Monarchy, which included Bjelovar, a city that Empress Maria Theresa had built in the very centre of the Varaždin Generalate in 1756. This policy consisted of the legalization of medical experts’ education, and the establishment of hospitals and xenodochia based on legal acts covering public health issues, and numerous community regulations. These documents were the key fundament of the later legal health regulations. Before the founding of the city of Bjelovar, there existed no organized or professional healthcare. However, after the founding of the city, legal health regulations were implemented in all components. The first hospital in the city, which still operates today, was established; company sanitary stations with surgeons and company midwives were formed across the Generalate; the first pharmacies were opened; xenodochia (lazarettos) were established in the outskirts of the city as quarantines of a kind; many educated health workers of regulated professions were active in the city and its surroundings: medical doctors (doctors of medicine), junior and senior surgeons, pharmacists, midwives, medical assistants, and nurses. The geographical position of the Varaždin Generalate and Bjelovar, far from active battlefields and the Habsburg-Ottoman border, ensured – thanks to the implementation of regulations covering public health issues – safer public health and the development of healthcare and medicine. The centralized approach of the Viennese court in the second half of the 18th century exercised influence in this respect.

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