Early Modern Health Care Provision and the Idea of the State

This project is focused on structural developments of health care provision within one part of early modern Austria, the `Erzherzogtum Österreich unter der Enns`. Its primary aims is to discuss these structures in their regional, political, economic, social as well as cultural context. Special attention will be given to contemporary ideas of how state and economy should be developed according to the theories of cameralism and `medical police`. The specific function of the medical faculty of the University of Vienna as an administrative institution will be a core element of the analysis, as it gradually took over control and administration of health care in this region. Some regions of neighbouring Western Hungary will be included into the analysis, because these regions regarded and `used` in the faculty structures as an important regulating body in their provision of health care, though there existed no formal rules concerning this.