Planning in London and Typhus in Warsaw, 1919–1920

Abstract

This chapter describes how Western planning met eastern European post-imperial reality in shaping a new health organization after the First World War. There were no immediate plans for a new international health organization as part of the League of Nations, and subsequent discussions among public health experts in western Europe and North America dismissed the idea of an organization that practiced active intervention. The realities of a typhus epidemic amidst war devastation and state-building in eastern Europe changed the practice of international health. The expectations and needs of smaller states would contribute to shaping international health activities and the practices of internationalism more generally. Responding to Polish requests for anti-typhus aid, the League of Nations established an Epidemic Commission that became a model, under Polish guidance, for a practice of international health as positive action. Public health concerns as part of state-building and of international relations in post-imperial eastern Europe became unexpectedly important to the League of Nations’ internationalism by way of Poland.