Andrija Štampar
(an excerpt from 'Selected Papers of Andrija Štampar': "Life and Achievements of Andrija Štampar, Fighter for the Promotion of Public Health" by M.D. Grmek)

In the Service of the Health Organization of the League of Nations

Immediately after Štampar's retirement, the Council of the Medical School in Zagreb elected him full professor of Hygiene and Social Medicine, but the state authorities did not want to confirm this election.

From July 1, 1931 till July 1, 1933, Štampar was permanently employed as the expert of the Health Organization. In this period, he entered upon a new kind of work: study travels, extensive lecturing in various parts of the world, the tackling of health problems at the international level, and an ever deepening considerations of general issues of social medicine and public health services.

From October 1931 till January 1932 Štampar stayed in the United States and Canada as the guest of the Rockefeller Foundation. The League of Nations also entrusted him with the task of acquainting himself with the work of a special American Committee dealing with the costs of medical care. From January to March 1993 he spent in China. The Health Organization sent him there as an advisor to help the Chinese health administration in the control of the mass infectious diseases which cropped up after devastating floods in 1931. In the spring of 1932, Štampar came back to Europe and worked at the Hygiene Committee in Geneva, of which he was elected Vice President.

From the autumn of 1932 till the summer of 1933, as the expert of the Health Organization and in the capacity of a visiting professor, Štampar delivered a series of lectures at the European universities and Schools of Public Health.

The Secretary General of the League of Nations, in a letter of August 30, 1933, asked Štampar to be 'the League expert on health matters to be put at the disposal of the Chinese Government in connection with the plan of technical cooperation with the League of Nations in the national reconstruction'. Štampar accepted this task and set ou immediately on the journey to Shanghai where he got in touch with the National Economic Council and the national health administration.

The first region of Štampar's work was the province of Kiangsi which is situated in the southern part of China. Štampar prepared a detailed report on the economic and health conditions in this province and proposed a series of measures for the improvement of the living conditions of Chinese peasants.

The chief point of Štampar's report on the province of Kiangsi was, no doubt, his request for an immediate implementation of agrarian reform. For the then Chinese rulers, Štampar's proposals were too revolutionary. During his stay in China, he also visited the provinces of Yunnan, Kwangsi and Szechwan. On leaving China, he was given two testimonials from the Central Chinese Government as a sign of their gratitude and appreciation. The text of one of these testimonials, written in the Chinese alphabet on a wonderful silk and coloured paper ground, runs in free translation as follows:

'Dr Štampar has cometo China to help our Government in its work on reconstruction based on the plan of technical cooperation with the League of Nations. He went round several provinces, from Kansu and Shanghai in the West to Kwangtung and Kwangsi in the South, and made a valuable contribution to the reconstruction of our villages, especially in the field of rural health protection services. On his departure we wish to give this to him as a remembrance of his work in China, hoping he will come to visit us again. - Ching Feng'

In August 1936, Štampar returned home, to Zagreb. The following year, four years after his first wife died, he married Dr Desanka Ristovic, a physician who distinguished herself as Head of the School Polyclinic in Zagreb and had been from the beginning one of the most faithful followers of Štampar's sociomedical ideology. The great understanding of his wife and their harmonious family life greatly helped Štampar in his future work.

In 1936 he received an offer from the Secretary General of the League of Nations for the post of an expert at the Health Organization in Geneva. In 1938, he received an invitation from the Harvard University in Boston, and he delivered the Cutter lecture there. After Boston, at the invitation from the Rockefeller Foundation, he toured a great part of North America and lectured on hygiene and social medicine at a series of universities (Yale, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Cincinnati, Vanderbilt, McHarry, Tulane, Texas, Los Angeles, Berkley, Portland, Minnesota, Toronto, McGill, Columbia, Galvestone).