The online collection HEALTH AND SOCIAL WELFARE IN THE CZECH LANDS contains 66 newsreel segments from 1910-44 depicting the development and institutionalization of health and social care in the Czech lands in the first half of the 20th century. The Czech healthcare system experienced a period of unprecedented advancement at the end of the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century, right at a time when it became possible to chronicle it in film form. A network of key hospital institutions was established in big city centers. Several sanatoriums were founded in quieter locations outside of major urban agglomerations. The most important institutions built in Prague were in Nové Město, Vinohrady, Bulovka, Krč, Střešovice, Motol, and a psychiatric hospital complex in Bohnice. The network of health care facilities at the time consisted not only of state institutions with inpatient care but also of privately owned treatment institutions, clinics, and counseling centres, which, in addition to state support, received their income from membership fees, public subsidy, private donations, and their own profits.

The oldest film footage of hospitals in our region includes a 1910 segment featuring the opening of the Emperor Franz Joseph Jubilee Hospital in České Budějovice, a report on the neurorehabilitation clinic of Dr. Jan Šimsa in Krč near Prague from around the same time, or footage from the military hospital Urania in Vrané nad Vltavou from the World War I period. The first Czechoslovak President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk’s visits to medical facilities are recorded in film segments from the sanatorium in Prague’s Podolí, from the People’s Sanatorium in Prosečnice, lung sanatoriums in Nová Ves pod Pleší and Jevíčko, and Rudolf’s Hospital in Opočno. Film segments filmed during the interwar period offer glimpses of the exteriors and interiors of the Prague hospitals Na Bulovce, the Children’s Hospital in Sokolská Street or the hospital in Prague’s Střešovice, and a few examples outside of Prague, like the Baťa Hospital in Zlín or the Psychiatric Sanatorium in Dobříš. The footage presents the atmosphere of hospital building interiors of that time, provides information on the development of trends in hospital architecture, and shows the steadily increasing quality of institutional care for the sick.

The collection includes several films charting the progress of medical research, introductions of new diagnostic and therapeutic methods, and the application of increasingly sophisticated devices to improve healthcare quality. Captured on film were, for example, the production and widespread application of diphtheria vaccines, the production of pharmaceuticals and surgical catgut fibre, new tuberculosis treatment methods, Jaroslav Heyrovský’s polarography, a radio emanation device for cancer treatment, a new anaesthesia machine, as well as demonstrations of physiotherapy for very young patients, employee physical exams, training of medical personnel, and the activities of the Prague Institute of Physiology.

The social welfare system experienced a boom during the First Republic as well. In addition to the adoption of a law limiting the original eleven-hour workday to eight hours, the Czechoslovak Republic abolished child labour, provided education for young people regardless of their gender, and introduced a model of health insurance based on the compulsory contributions from an individual’s income. Thus, an insured person and his family members were entitled to free medical treatment and medicine, and any employee received sickness benefits in the case of illness. The welfare developments were hampered by the economic crisis in the early 1930s. The shortcomings of the state health and social administration were compensated by various organisations such as the Czechoslovak Red Cross, led by Alice Masaryk, the Salvation Army, Zemka, the Masaryk League against Tuberculosis, and many others. Similar associations not only set up health institutes, holiday camps for children, counselling centres for mothers and their children, nurseries, and shelters for children or seniors but also promoted public health education. Among the charity programmes depicted in the newsreels are collections of clothes for the socially disadvantaged, soup kitchens for the needy, the Children’s Day of Joy event, a fundraiser set up at the Christmas Tree of the Republic, social aid campaigns for refugees from the occupied borderlands and, last but not least, the construction of the Masaryk Institute’s Children’s Home in Krč or the Bakula Institute for Education through Life and Work.

The period of German occupation under the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia brought a number of organisational changes and administrative interventions to the Czech healthcare system. Although some First Republic projects, like the hospitals in Motol, Krč, and Bulovka, were completed, the largest and most modern workplaces were usurped by the German armed forces. This fact is documented by the footage from a visit of the acting head of the Reich doctors, Kurt Blome, to the Prague General Hospital, the opening of the SS infirmary in the building of the sanatorium in Podolí, or the establishment of a German infirmary in the hospital complex in Střešovice.