Vortrag
Healing Lungs and Bodies: Children’s Sanatoria at Lake Balaton from the First to the Second World War

PD Dr. Friederike Kind-Kovács will give a talk on "Healing Lungs and Bodies: Children’s Sanatoria at Lake Balaton from the First to the Second World War" at the biennial meeting of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health 2025  "Health Beyond Medicine".

In the first half of the 20th century Lake Balaton in Hungary saw the creation of a series of children’s sanatoria along its shore. On June 15th, 1911, the first children’s sanatorium at the lake was inaugurated in Balatonalmádi. As water and sun were considered natural healing remedies, the lake and its surrounding had gained reputation as a health resort. Balaton’s climate was believed to be beneficial for children suffering from rickets, tuberculosis and other diseases that stemmed from malnutrition, precarious living conditions and other health crises. Sunbathing, lake bathing, outdoor play, and proper nutrition were considered medicine for the child’s body.Especially in the aftermath of the First World War and the subsequent end of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the bodies of children in Hungary – and especially the capital city of Budapest – were visibly affected. The children’s particular vulnerability resulted from a combination of geographic displacement, orphanhood, neglect, malnutrition, lack of appropriate housing, and exposure to infectious diseases. The children’s material body had been transformed into a starving, sick, fragile, rickety, impaired thing that – literally – embodied the brutal effects of the war and the imperial dissolution on children’s bodies and health. Fearing the degeneration of the future nation and the belief in children urgent recovery, as this paper will show, children were institutionalized in one of the various children’s sanatoria for extended stays during the summer months. Apart from funding through the Hungarian state, children’s placements in the sanatoria were financially supported by international relief organizations such as the American Red Cross or the International Red Cross, whose representatives visited the child sanatoria to see for themselves how their financial support had healed the children’s harmed bodies and thus had helped in rescuing Hungary’s nation’s future. Through an analysis of social photography documenting children’s daily lives in the sanatoria, his talk will illustrate the significant emphasis placed on visually capturing the transformation of children’s bodies. These images documented the physical recovery of severely underfed, crippled, and suffering child patients, depicting their progress into healthier and happier children. Beyond that, the talk will explore how these children’s sanatoria responded to the First and Second World War and the resulting health crises, offering us an insight into the transformation of children’s health care in the first half of the 20th century.