Ksenija Kantoci: Vladimir Ćepulić, Zagreb, 1974, bronze, HMMF-2903
Vladimir Ćepulić
Vladimir Ćepulić, Croatian physician (Novi Vinodolski, 23rd March 1891 – Zagreb, 23rd March 1964).
He studied medicine in Innsbruck, Berlin and Vienna (1915). After specialization in phtyseology in Leysin and Hamburg, in 1920 he organized and led the Tuberculosis Department at the Zagreb Foundation Hospital and in 1921 he founded the first antituberculatory dispenser in the continental Croatia in Zagreb. In 1934 he joined these two institutions in the Institute for Tuberculosis, which he led until the end of World War II.
By 1945 he was a regular professor of phtyseology at the Zagreb School of Medicine. After the war in Zagreb, he was the director of the Central Antituberculous Dispenser, director of the Hospital for tuberculosis (1950 – 1958), then the head of the Department for tuberculosis at the City Hygiene Institute. He explored the biological characteristics of the causers of tuberculosis and the relationship between infection and disease. By creating a wide network of antituberculosis dispensers and developing their diagnostic, therapeutic and prophylactic action, he founded a modern anti-tuberculosis service in Croatia. He especially researched social factors in the epidemiology of tuberculosis, promoted the popularization of antituberculous protection, and in 1928 founded the Society for the suppression of tuberculosis. In 1921, he founded the School for Nurses in Zagreb, the first school for the education of nurses in Zagreb, which he led until 1925.
He was the president of the Croatian Medical Association (1935-1945), under which he founded the Croatian Academy for specialization of physicians and the Museum of History of Health.
In the Department of the History of Medical Sciences of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, correspondence Ćepulić – Sielski was preserved for the period 1942-1943, which revealed the circumstances, the manner and purpose of gathering objects for the Museum, among which were also those that are now a part of Collection of National Folk Medicine of Croatian Museum of Medicine and Pharmacy. After two years of gathering activities in quite difficult war conditions and intensive preparations, the Museum of History of Health opened on January 29, 1944 and was presented to the public. Vladimir Ćepulić also delivered a lecture, accompanied by photographs of exposed objects, and then published on the pages of Liječnički vijesnik. This permanently recorded the memory of its existence, layout, and individual objects.
