Short view on origins of paediatric health care in Prague

Summary

The first charity for protection of orphans in Prague was opened in the 16^th century by Italian living in Prague. The first outpatient department for sick children in Prague was opened by Johann Melitsch in 1790 in the Saint Lazare hospital in Charles Square. In the same hospital, the first paediatric department with 9 beds was opened by Eduard Kratzman in 1842. Relatively low mortality of hospitalized children that time must be explained. Sick infants were not admitted to hospitals but sent to the orphan institutes with mainly social care, therefore in middle of the 19^th century the infant mortality in these establishments was extremely high, during some years nearly 100 %.

The first hospital for children in Prague was built by Josef Löschner in Charles Square in 1853, where a number of distinguished paediatricians worked including Gottfried Ritter von Rittershain, who described dermatitis exfoliativa Ritter, Alois Epstein, who described Epsteins pearls by newborns, Adalbert Czerny, who studied glycogen and later became a head of Paediatric clinic in Berlin, Leopold Moll, who was an initiator of the care for mother and child and later became a head of Paediatric clinic in Vienna, Dusan Lambl, who described flagellate (nowadays Giardia lamblia) in the stool of children with diarrhoe, and Bohdan Neureutter, who after the splitting of the Charles-Ferdinand-University on the in German speaking and Czech speaking parts opened the Czech paediatric hospital at the corner of streets Benatska and Vinicna.

Due to increasing requirement of paediatric beds in Prague, simultaneous constructions of two paediatric centres were started in Prague. The first, areal with four buildings for German paediatric clinic was opened in 1901, which still serve as the second largest paediatric department in Prague, of course with much lower number of beds than 100 years ago. The second one, the Czech paediatric Frantz Josef I. hospital was opened in 1902, but due to construction of the bridge across the Nusle valley was demolished in 1970 and it´s clinics were transferred to the hospital in Motol.

Keywords:
history of paediatric health care