Palla Ákos szerk.: Az Országos Orvostörténeti Könyvtár közleményei 5. (Budapest, 1957)

Dr. JÁKI GYULA: Adatok Schoepf Merei Ágost élettörténetéhez

SUMMARY Ágost Schoepf Merei is one of the most outstanding personalities of the Hungarian medical history. He was the creator of Hungarian pediatrics and of the first Hungarian hospital for children. Many data of his biography are erroneous in the publications dealing with his person. Author emphasizes that it is of paramount importance to know the biographical data and that it does not suffice to know the activities and works of the person we wish to write about. The personality of the author, the environment, the conditions under which he had worked, the sources he used, the events seen, heard or experienced, the rough drafts of later works, the traditions on which de relied are to be known if we want to evaluate and understand someone's works. Only in the possession of reliable, accurate biographical data can one formulate a correct judgement and write a true biography. Agost Schoepf was the offspring of a Transdanubian, Kőszeg family. However, in 1769, his father moved to Győr, or, to be more precise, it was that year that he was accepted as a citizen of that town and as a member of the butchers' guild there. Ágost Schoepf Merei was the fourth child of his second wife and was born on the 26th of September, 1804, in Győr. His father made a considerable fortune in that town, as a butcher, live-stock dealer, viniculturist and seller of wine. The father died in 1810 and after that the mother, 35 years younger than her husband, took over the education of the children. Ágost Schoepf attended school in Győr for a while. The house in wich there used to be the school of the Lutheran (of the Augustan Confession) church is still standing. To that school went Ágost Schoepf in the period 1813—19. (Fig. 1.). After the death of his mother his sister, Zsuzsa, who was 10 years older, married Sándor Lumnitzer. From that marriage was born later the heroic Chief of the Medical Corps of the glorious War of Liberation. After the above marriage Ágost was sent to the Evangelist lyceum of Sopron, leaving Győr in February, 1819. According to the certificate given him on leaving Győr he had been an eminent scholar. As far as we know it, he completed his high school studies in Sopron. As it could be ascertained Ágost Schoepf started his university studies in Vienna, in 1821, but left the university because one of the professors offended him. Then it was only in 1828 that he enrolled again, this time to the first year of the Medical University