O prvoj bjelovarskoj bolnici
On the First Hospital in Bjelovar

Summary/Abstract: This paper on medical history will present the circumstances, organisation, functioning, fi nancing and operation of the fi rst hospital in Bjelovar during several periods between 1760 and 1845, when the new building of the brigade hospital of the Varaždin Military Border was opened; it has remained a part of the Bjelovar General Hospital ever since. According to the results of yearlong research included in a defended doctoral dissertation, the fi rst hospital in Bjelovar was a military (regimental or rather garrison) hospital, opened when the city of Bjelovar was founded, and not – as claimed so far in the literature – established in 1845. The hospital had been in the possession of the Đurđevac regiment, which was one of the two regiments in the city, and had remained so until the demilitarisation of the Military Border and transfer to civil government on four locations in the city, out of which only the one opened in 1845 has survived. Surgeons operated at the hospital with the assistance of medical orderlies, while the hospital commander was the medical captain-regimental physician of the Đurđevac regiment. The hospital was at fi rst military; as the city of Bjelovar subsequently became the community centre of the Varaždin Generalate, the hospital changed to both military and civil, or rather became community-owned. Thus, both military and civil authorities fi nanced the hospital together. Hence, soldiers and their families, as well as citizens of Bjelovar and the surrounding company sett lements from across the entire Varaždin Generalate were treated at the hospital. According to the Register of Deaths of the Bjelovar parish of St. Teresa of Avila, massive dying at the hospital and the causes of death as of the fi rst decades of the 19th century became evident. In most cases, infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and diverse infections (pneumonia, meningitis), which were incurable then, caused massive dying. The first hospital marked the beginning of the continuous 250-year-long organised health care in the Bjelovar region, which has lasted until the present date.

• Details
• Contents