The history of medicine and pharmacy in 'Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki' in the years 1956-2005T

The publications in 'Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki' in the years 1956-2005 reflected the state of Polish history of medicine and pharmacy. After the thaw of 1956, a positivist (physician-oriented) current prevailed in such publications, and that tendency grew even stronger in the 1980s. Marxist attempts at writing the history of medicine never gained a dominant position, and a gradual disppearance of that convention could observed from the 1970s onwards. Since 1993, representatives of the antipositivist (humanist) current began to publish in the Quarterly, encouraged by a conducive atmosphere in the Institute of History of Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The history of pharmacy, which at first was present in only negligible quantities among the Quarterly's publications, began to make its presence felt since the middle of the 1960s. Historians of pharmacy were never engaged in methodological discourse, implementing their own research programmes. The Quarterly was highly esteemed by the large and institutionalized milieu of historians of medicine, even though other journals also published studies in the history of medicine and pharmacy. The Editorial Board of the Quarterly always took care that the articles and materials should be based on sources and represented high standards of quality; the Board was also open to contributions by representatives of other disciplines and to new trends in the history of medicine. Although the existing restrictions have reduced the number of potential contributors to the Quarterly who could meet the criteria adopted by the Editorial Board, 'Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki' has, in its fifty years of existence, served as a useful platform for the exchange of scholarly views, for the emergence of new research currents and programmes, and for information on new scienticic publications and events.