The second half of the nineteenth century was an era of mass labour migration in Europe, when the Atlantic route became of paramount importance alongside intra-continental mobility. From the last third of the century Italy and Hungary were among the most important emigrating countries. By this time changes in the regulation of migration had begun to take place with the development of stronger state control, which affected mobility and the relationship between emigrants and transporters. The question also arose as to whether and how the large emigrating states could ensure the loyalty of their emigrant citizens and control them en route and in the destination states. The regulatory process which began in the 1880s gradually moved from an administrative approach to the development of more comprehensive legal sources covering more and more aspects of emigration with the Hungarian government making use of foreign solutions, particularly the Italian Emigration Act of 1901.

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The reconciliation of 1867 between Austria and Hungary brought great changes to Hungarian public administration: the way towards the building up of a modern public administration had been opened. Although there was a functioning public health system and a related legislation from the late 18^th century, major issues - such as balanced geographical distribution of medical personnel, fair access to medical services even in the poorer regions of the country, and the effective protection against some contagious diseases - were not resolved for decades. During the reform work of public administration since the 1870s, the lawmakers touched repeatedly the framework and functioning of the public health as well. Although the general conditions of the domain depended traditionally on the municipalities and counties due to the national importance of the matter, the government made efforts to make the functioning of the public health more efficient through centralisation. The contagious diseases continuously endangered the population, revealing the weak points in the existing public health system, thereby giving a momentum to the reforms and helping the government in its organization of prevention and clearly contributing to the legislation work.

In Hungary preventative measures against trachoma began in the winter of 1883-1884. Initially based on the recently issued public health law, it was imbedded in a general prevention programme against various epidemics. Local authorities and municipal boards were made responsible for carrying it out. These authorities and boards were obliged to organize supervision, to establish medical offices and ophthalmological wards and to take charge of the continuity of treatments. The public health department, however, faced serious difficulties, since most of the communities did not have the financial resources for such provision nor did they have enough trained physicians. Since the spread of trachoma could not be stopped by these measures, a new and effective solution had to be found. A new article was created for this purpose, the so called fifth article of the year 1886 "On preventing the spread of trachoma", which placed the burden of expenses for treatment - in case of lack of means - on the state budget. The government set up specialized professional training and the ophthalmological hospital system became specialized and modernised with the establishment of special trachoma hospitals, or--in public hospitals--ophthalmological wards. Although the first preventative measures were taken during the period mentioned above, the disease itself persisted, still occurring in large numbers of cases as late as the end of the Second World War.