Próba reformy instytucji szpitalnych na terenie województwa krakowskiego w dobie Sejmu Wielkiego
Authors: Jędrzejewski Przemysław 
Published: April 2021

Hospitals in Krakow voivodship in the period of Great Sejm 1788–1792

Looking after the sick, the elderly, the disabled, the poor and the homeless has been a difficult social problem to solve for ages. Since the beginning of the Middle Ages, organising charity belonged to the domain of the Church and one form of providing those who needed it with aid was through establishing institutions appointed especially for that reason: hospitals. Until the end of the 18th century in towns and since the beginning of the 20th century in rural centres the hospital did not serve as a healing centre but mainly as a place which nowadays we could call a shelter. Due to the deteriorating condition of hospital institutions in the 18th century, it was commonly realised that there was the need to get the issue of shelters in order. The first attempt to conduct a reform of hospitals was undertaken in 1775 at the partition sejm, when two hospital committees were created: the Crown and the Lithuanian one. The five‑year existence of the hospital committees would not improve the situation of shelters in the country. Eventually, they were dismissed by the decision of sejm in 1780 and the supervision over hospitals in royal towns was given to boni ordinis committees and the Department of Police. Another attempt to conduct a hospital reform was undertaken by the Great Sejm, which commissioned the supervision of hospitals and the control over funds of the pious to field administration: the civil/military law enforcement committees, which took over the duties in towns, which in that regard were commissioned to the boni ordinis committees in 1768. Those magistrates worked in all of the Commonwealth, downsized by means of the first partition, except for Gdańsk. The legal framework of the committees’ functioning in the Crown were established in the sejm constitution Komisje Porządkowe cywilno‑wojskowe województw, ziem i powiatów w Koronie. The civil/military law enforcement committees were subordinate to appropriate central institutions, the Military Committee of Both Nations or the Crown Treasury Committee, among others. In the case of Krakow voivodship two Civil/Military Committees were appointed: one for the districts of Krakow and Proszowice located in the former city, while the other for the districts of Książ and Lelów located in the latter town at first and later in Szczekociny. Both committees operated in the years 1790–1792. Initially, the new institutions ordered the hospital managers to send the descriptions of their facilities, including the list of funds and donors, as well as information on the facility managers themselves. Then, the commissioners conducted hospital visitations themselves. In the documentation of the institutes information on pious funds were noted down (what it was written on, under whose management), incomes (from villages, cultivated fields, gardens, meadows, propinations, lists of donors), expenses, renovations, debts, the number of the poor and the physical state of the hospital building (wooden, mortared, number of floors and rooms).