Wiad Lek. 1996 ; 49(7-12): 147-51.

[Eighteenth century calendars as a source of Polish medical history]

Piotrowski W.

ZespoÅu Opieki Zdrowotnej w Jaworze.

The general decline of science which took place in the first half of the 18th century was a cause of a huge quantity of calendars editing. Calendars substituted for the former scientific literature. Up to 1763 over 800 calendars appeared. A half of them was published in Cracov. Those calendars differed from the contemporary ones. Apart from dates, they included not only basic information in history, geography agriculture economy but, not seldom, medicine as well. Most often they were written by university professors with a few physicians among them. Obviously, the level of the presented medical knowledge was very low. There wenadductions to astrology, wizardry and Provinience. But some diagnoses and therapeutic advice being a kind of doctor's manual, useful to so-called domestic medicine are still worth of the attention. First of all, phytotherapy chapter based on the folk empiricism, was the most rational. Thought 18th century calendars did not have much in common with real medicine, they make an interesting source to search for history of the Polish medicine of the Saxon times.