EN
In the article the attention is paid to one of the scientific fields which contributed to the mature discipline of urban planning in the Polish territories. Theoreticians (and practitioners as well) of public hygiene were much aware of the urban problems, which were conspicuous especially in the cities of the so called Russian Poland, misruled in many respects by the Tsarist authorities. More and more detailed proposals and instructions how to improve the sanitary condition in e.g. Warsaw, Lviv, Cracow and Poznan, cities belonging to Russian, Austria-Hungary and Germany at that time, made by physicians and sanitary engineers, paved the way to a new scientific field in its own right. Some conclusions made in these public debates were later adopted by other professionals who dealt with the urban spatial development (like urban planners), what helped to establish the Polish school of urban planning after 1916.