Elements of the health culture of Polish society.

The purpose of this article is to characterize Polish society from the point of view of health culture. The article is based on research conducted in 1978 on the representative national sample. In that research we sought to trace the dependence of styles of being sick, methods of treatment, and the entire related sphere of behavior on the following factors: socio-demographic characteristics of patients, with special attention to their position in social structure; availability of medical care service--in reality and perceived subjectively; estimation of the state of health of patients; confidence in medicine as a social institution, system of knowledge and in health care service; medical knowledge of patients; availability of other sources of help, alternative to official medicine.