The earliest hospital surgical departments in the territory of what is present-day Yugoslavia were formed about the end of the 19th century. The founders were educated in Vienna, Berlin, Graz, and Budapest. Even at that time, the standards for scholarship recipients in those clinics were very rigid, and these young surgeons brought a high quality of surgical accomplishment from abroad back to their own country. And so the surgical profession became highly regarded among the people.
What can really be called Yugoslavian surgery did not start until after World War I when the new state was formed and the medical schools at Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana were founded. At that time the influence of the French surgical schools began to be felt, especially in Serbia, because a great number of doctors graduated from French faculties—Paris, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Nancy. Among the foremost was Dr. Vojislav Subotic from Belgrade whose work