Recovery attempt: the state of health of Fundul Moldovei (Bucovina) in the summer of 1928
Very little is known today about the monographic campaign that took place in the summer of 1928 at Fundul Moldovei, Bucovina. Only a few researchers from Dimitrie Gusti’s team wrote and published small studies concerning the campaign in the scientifical journals and magazines of the time: Traian Herseni signed an article about „Person and society at Fundul Moldovei” in „Arhiva pentru ştiinţa şi reforma socială”, the same magazine hosted a few pages written by Floria Capsali about „Dances from Fundul Moldovei” and Henri H. Stahl published in „Sociologie românească” an article about a „A visionary from Bucovina”. A dense and serious contribution, belonging to the anthropologist Francisc Rainer and including the results of the anthropological study carried out at Fundul Moldovei, was published in 1937, as a tribute to the International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistorical Archeology, hosted by Bucharest in September that year. In other words, only four researchers – from those 60 who were at Fundul Moldovei in 1928 – left written traces about this campaign. Apart from them – nothing, zero, vacuum. One thing is sure, though: research had been done at Fundul Moldovei, as long as the campaign lasted for a whole month and as long as the patrimony of Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum in Bucharest includes two files with documents, belonging to the researchers taking part at this particular campaign. These are partial, fragmentary files, remainders of what had been studied in the summer of 1928, which only through a miracol could be saved from the attempt of the communist regime to make them disappear. In 2008, National Village Museum decided to publish the recuperated documents – all of them – in a volume: Fundu Moldovei. 80 de ani de la prima campanie monografică 1928-2008. Given our attempt to identify what had been studied in the monographic campaigns which took place in the 1920’s and 1930’s when it came to rural health, these two files (and, consequently, the volume published in 2008) are a real gold mine. They don’t include datasheets written by the members of the biological team – a team with this name existed among the researchers – but they do include equally important documents signed by the entire group of researchers; and those documents contain numerous pieces of sanitary information. We retrace – by means of these archive documents – the state of health of Fundul Moldovei (Bucovina) in the summer of 1928.
Keywords: monographic campaigns, Sociological School of Bucharest, Francisc Rainer, syphilis, rural health, peasant household, latrines, water supply