Rural community and health care interdependence: an historical, geographical study.

The relationships between rural health care and community development were examined over time, for the case-study area of Huron and Perth counties in Southwestern Ontario. The underlying premises were that an historical-geographic study could provide both a perspective on the development of rural health services and explore the interdependent relationship between rural community and health care. The research concentrated on examinations of the 2 key elements of rural health care, namely the rural practitioner and the community hospital. Detailed reconstruction revealed that, over time, both physicians and hospitals moved from a marginal to a central position and identity within the community, in parallel with the stages of community development in the 19th and 20th centuries, with hospitals emerging as major foci of rural sustainability. In the last 2 decades, the strength of the area's rural community health system was successfully marshalled to offset the potentially negative aspects of provincial health care restructuring. This reinforced both the perception and the reality of the interdependence of health services and communities in the predominantly rural area.

[Healing and helping in Hallstatt--on the medical history of mining town in Salzkammergut]. / Heilen und Helfen in Hallstatt--zur Medizingeschichte des Bergknappenortes im Salzkammergut.

The medical care practiced at Hallstatt was specifically influenced by its salt mine, well known since prehistoric times, and by the isolated location of this place lying on a lake as well as in the mountains. Since the 16th century the Hallstatt saltworks had a hospital, with a special isolation ward since 1772. In addition to it, a small hospital for infectious diseases was opened at the beginning of the 20th century. The barber-surgeons, whose names have been known since the 17th century, and later on the university-graduated doctors had to do their work without any outside help and moreover, they had to supply their patients with necessary medicaments. In her own house, the last local midwife used to offer delivery and lying-in rooms for women. The mine rescue service (since 1945), the mountain rescue service (since 1923), the water rescue service (since 1960) and the Red Cross (since 1978) have been playing an important part preparing the work of the local doctors. Paleoparasitological examinations of human excrements found in collapsed prehistoric tunnels proved that the miners had suffered from whip worms and eel worms. Contrary to the badly preserved skeletons found in the prehistoric burying place on the Hallstatt Salzberg, the human remains in the Hallstatt charnel house made anthropological examination possible.