[The understanding of disease in the second half of the XIX century and and the beginning of the XX century and postulates of social medicine. Preliminary study].

Representatives of Polish school of the philosophy looked for the answers to the questions: what the medicine should be and how to use the practice of treatment as a tool of the medical knowledge acquirement? The answers to these questions presented in books and in the journal "Krytyka Lekarska" have contributed to the development of Polish medical thought. The tasks imposed on the social medicine, which in the second half of the 19th century formulated new goals for the medicine, got reflected in this thought too. Health and the endeavor to be free from diseases were of primary importance in the theoretical postulates of the social medicine. Achieving fitness, aiming at it, preserving and enhanding good health were the basic objects of the requests addressed to doctors and medicine. At the same time therapeutic methods offered were often ineffective because the medical activity was focussed on diagnosing and understanding the nature of the disease rather than its treatment.