"It is easy to agree with the editors of the second volume of the CEU Press Studies in the History of Medicine about the general contribution of the authors of the chapters, which they see as a precise reconstruction of the “international diff usion of health, hygiene and eugenics and their implementation” (20) in diff erent regional contexts. Taking as a starting point the claim for a national and social renaissance in the interwar period, they undertake the ambitious task of presenting, in a comparative framework, important episodes in the establishment of professional and institutional networks of public health policies in Southeastern Europe up to 1945. ... The sequence of chapters in the book corresponds to the aim of the editors and contributors to reveal the diverse dynamics of modernization and the medicalization of social life in Southeastern Europe. ... The index, containing scientifi c and popular concepts and the names of prominent physicians, political leaders, and intellectuals, helps the reader in identifying both the common patterns and the national specificities of biopolitical surveillance over the (re)production of the modern citizen. ...
A close examination of the articles clearly shows that interest in the development of eugenic ideas prevailed over the reconstruction of the various competing strategies of social engineering that emerged in the fi eld of medical sciences in Southeastern Europe to 1945."
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