Abstract:
The contribution aims at showing the massive consequences infectious diseases had on regional mortality rates, caused not only by different levels of health supply but also by cultural differences. Smallpox was an eminent cause of death throughout the modern period, not only in the Habsburg monarchy but in the whole of Europe. Although broad counter-measures were conducted by Austrian state agencies and health professionals already during the early 19th century, particularly by vaccination, the disease remained a serious and common danger until the end of the century, the Eastern provinces of Galicia and Bukovina being regions of particularly high risk: Even after the disappearance of smallpox in the rest of Cisleithania, in 1895, there was yet another epidemic of considerable extent, which struck Bukovina with particularly high morbidity and mortality rates. Economic living conditions, the educational level and healthcare supply were all particularly low in the province. This may serve as a partial explanation, already given by contemporaries, albeit often within a quite prejudiced discourse. Moreover, contemporary Bukovinian immunization statistics show, that focused vaccination efforts in the province from the 1870s onwards, finally led to considerably higher proportions of protected people, compared to most other parts of Cisleithania, at the end of the century.