Establishment and activity of medical societies in Lower Styria - a review.

In the 1860s, the medical societies in Habsburg Monarchy, undertook a part of the medical postgraduate training. Doctors and wound surgeons from Ljubljana established medical association in October 1861 («Ärztlicher Leseverein in Laibach»). At a meeting in October 1862 they decided to include all the doctors and wound surgeons from the Carniola region. Following the organization was renamed Medical Association in Carniola («Verein der Ärzte in Krain»). A similar provincial association was founded by the Styrian doctors in Graz as early as in May 1862 («Verein der Ärzte in Steiermark»). Similar medical associations were also established in the Lower Styria in the 1870s. The most important medical association was established in Maribor in 1876. Another medical association was established in Celje in 1877 and one in the Ptuj-Ljutomer region in 1877. As the associations were mostly communicating in German, this might have been the reason for the establishment of the Slovene medical society in Celje in 1906. The Slovenian national consciousness began to strengthen across the territory of today's Slovenia. Already after the First World War in 1918, they managed to achieve the establishment of the Slovene Medical Society. Due to the events during the Second World War, a uniform Slovene medical association was established in 1947.