Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1988. július-december (42. évfolyam, 27-48. szám)

1988-10-20 / 39. szám

Thursday, Oct. 20. 1988.

11.

AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO

Budapest

Asa City of Museums

By MARY SIMONS

On the Pest side of the river is the Hun-, garian National Museum, a great 19th-century neoclassic pile that is revered by Hungarians. On the steps of this museum in 1848 reformers made their demands for an independent government and freedom of the press. Huge exhibiton areas display dazzling collections of arms, gold and coins and the St. Stephen's crown.

Several miles from the center of old Buda is the Museum of Kiscell . Public transport not available and it's best to hire a car (have your hotel arrange it); fares are about $2 each way (at an exchange rate of about 50 forints to the dollar). The museum is in an 18th-century palace that was badly damaged during the revolt 30 years ago.

The ground floor , has a room full of printing presses plus a completely reconstructed apothecary shop. The painting collection, which includes some fine works by 20th-century Hungarian artists fairly unknown outside their own country, are shown on long dark corridors (female guards turn lights on and off as you go along) and in palatial chambers, each with an ornate ceramic tile stove in the corner.

On the Pest side, the Museum of Applied Art (also known at the Museum of Arts and Crafts) is a proper Hungarian architectural confection.

The domed structure is in the Hungarian "nouveau" style made famous by Ódon Lechner, whose other buildings can be seen in many small Hungarian cities. The exterior of the building has colored bricks and wildly decorative ceramics in Hindu, Islamic and Hungarian folk styles.

The collections are catholic and fanciful: furniture, rugs, clocks, bronze and

glass, book bindings, ivory, fans and pieces of modern industrial design. Hungarians are fiercely proud of their crafts; wood wares, lace and embroidery are still very well made and appreciated. The Ethnographical Museum, opposite the Parliament in Pest, is in the former High Court of Justice. Contents include ceramics, heavily carved furniture and richly embroidered costumes with felt waistcoats and lace- festooned blouses.

Down the boulevard from Heroes Square is a castle compound called Vajdahunyad. Near the entrance is a tiny chapel that copies the Church of Jak, a 13th-century Benedictine edifice located near the Austrian border.

The Museum of Agriculture, in one wing of the castle, is a great romp - not as full of esoterica as the American Museum of Natural History in New York but almost as much fun with plenty of plaster farm animals, village scenes, old ploughs and milking machines, collections of trophies - all won by animals - miniature granaries,

stables and assorted relics of what has been Hungary's greatest export and enduring pride; her agricultural production.

OR NATURE

Those who live amid nature, among nature and by nature know that the environment around us is not hostile. It heals and protects as well. Even the earliest cultures had their stores of medicinal herbs.

FOLK MEDICINE

These folk therapies live on in the age of civilization. People still swear by a chamomile compress or a lime-blossom tea to relieve a cough. These old natural remedies have been shown medically to be effective. They have other assets too. No linguist could ever have as many words to describe pain as a village "wise woman". No psychologist could better express sympathy than a bone-setter. No cabaret scrip- writer could pack as many jokes into an incantation as a medicine man encouraging his patient to get better.

Our selection is of therapies tried and tested by the Hungarian people for several centuries, and found to be effective. But the best test, of course, is to try them yourself.

Here are some other remedies recommended in Hungarian folk medicine:

STILL BENEFICIAL

for a headache: a compress wetted with vinegar.

For anaemia: liver fried rare, with red wine.

For an eye infection: a brew of acacia leaves, chamomile tea or white lily flowers in palinka.

For a sore throat: place a bag of warmed bran over your throat. Grated red cabbage with honey is also effective, and so is a drink of sage tea.

For a common cold: sniff grated horseradish.

For a chill: the hat cure; in other words drink so much palinka that you see two hats on your friend's head instead of one, then cover yourself up to the neck and sleep it off.

For gastric pains: drink thyme tea.

For diarrhoea: sloes either dried or preserved in syrup.

For rheumatics: rub in salted vinegar. According to another recipe, use a large cup of neat alcohol, the same amount of vinegar, and two whole eggs. After maturing the mixture for eight days, apply it

as an ointment to the part of the body that's painful.

For a bee sting, apply honey, and for a wasp sting vinegar.

Give these remedies a try yourself.

Dr. Antal F. Borbély:

Packaging a Criminal Design

Presidential candidate George Bush fills his speeches with words like humanism, compassion, patriotism, human rights, etc. Yet, he is for unceasing armaments, "Star Wars", the whole Reagan program.

How is it possible to understand this contradiction and that he is cabable of influencing great numbers of people?

Let me add a few toughts about this puzzling question which interests me as a psychiatrist concerned with the working of the human mind.

The answer focuses on the relationship between common sense, everyday consciousness and scientific consciousness.

Hegel mentioned that "common sense" can grasp only disconnected details from the totality of knowledge and is therefore full of halftruths. Further that for a common sense approach the relationship between appearance and essence remains unknown.

Marx said (Capital Vol. III.): "The minds of the people used to the irrational expressions of specific ^economic conditions do not get upset by total contradictions they encounter." Marx described that not the essence but the appearances have a direct, immediate effect on peole's consciousness.

He further showed that in societies with our economic structure the appearances falsely get reflected as essence. In summary, in our type of society the appearances are taken as essence and the essential relationship remain mystified.

Let me apply this to the recent Bush- Dukakis debate. It was not a true debate. The League of Women Voters has shown that, when they pulled out of sponsorship for the next one.

With our economic structure the essential relationships remain mystified in everyday life. President Reagan has specialized in this approach. In the terminology of the right-wing religious fanatics the final explosion is called "The Rapture". This is the moment when God separates the saved ones from the fallen ones and raptures them from wherever to the heavens while letting all others perish.

Never before in history has a criminal design of such proportions been packaged in such falsehood using without shame the mystified people's fears, hopes and prejudices.

What is our task at this particular time? Let us work to clear the air of this phenomenon so the people can see the truth.

Let us all join together in the most crucial vote of the 20^ century and quite possibly the most crucial in our lifetime.

Editors note: We are pleased to introduce Dr. Antal F. Borbély, clinical psychiatrist who will write a regular column for the English Page and will be happy to answer any questions readers have about the mind.

Editors

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