This article presents the sanitary and technical situation of medium-sized and small towns in the Kingdom of Poland, illustrating the state of neglect present in these towns a few years before the outbreak of the First World War. The diagnosis of the scale of neglect indicated the enormity of the tasks in improving the infrastructure of towns that faced the community of Polish urban planners, architects, engineers and politicians who decided on the directions and possibilities for rebuilding Polish cities and towns in the interwar period. The forerunner of the diagnosis of reconstruction needs was a survey of the sanitary and technical condition of the towns of the Kingdom of Poland, undertaken as a private initiative by the Warsaw-based hydrotechnical en¬gineer Emil Sokal (1851–1928). In August 1910, a series of articles by him presenting the results of a survey entitled Uzdrowotnienie miast małych [The Health Improvement of Small Towns] appeared in the Warsaw journal “Przegląd Techniczny”, addressed to technicians and architects. The article presents the assumptions of the survey, provides a set of questions sent out to municipal authorities and includes, based on E. Sokal’s descriptions, abbreviated versions of descriptions of the sanitary and technical condition of 33 towns. The results of the survey not only formed the basis for the first such diagnosis of the technical condition of the towns surveyed, but also provided additional information on the awareness of residents regarding the technical condition of their living environment. Thanks to the survey, deficiencies in the technical condition of the towns surveyed were defined, such as the poor quality of drinking water, the terrible state of street and market surfaces, the lack of sewage systems and basic sanitation facilities. The author of the survey was struck by the fact that the inhabitants of the surveyed towns ac-cepted the prevailing living conditions and did not expect changes. E. Sokal noted that the development of local industry at the time had a positive impact on the improvement of the technical condition of the towns surveyed. The conclusions of the survey, presented by E. Sokal, showed a generalised unsatisfactory technical condition of towns in the area of the Kingdom of Poland. E. Sokal believed that granting concessions for the development of urban infrastructure, and strengthening the role of local municipal authorities would bring rapid improvements. The article includes a map of the distribution of the towns depicted against the background of the administrative borders of the Kingdom of Poland and the borders of the governorates. A summary table is also included, giving the population of the towns surveyed to help give an idea of their scale.