Palla Ákos szerk.: Az Országos Orvostörténeti Könyvtár közleményei 10-11. (Budapest, 1958)

anatomical transformations of the cells. Has fundamental error in this case was that Ihe saw the cells only, he saw the part and not the whole. He preached the great independence of the cells. He did not see that cells are not 'independent citizens of the organism. He did not perceive that cellular-pathology could not lay claim to the whole realm of pathology. He saw the cells only and he did not see the living organism, the man as the biological unit, and he did not see the man as social unit. It is well known that it was in this manner that he opened the door to biologisim which in our domain forms even today one of the main lines for the attacks of idealism. 2. The morphologic-anatomical tendency as improved by Virchow has started in organic-pathology and arrived at cellular pathology thus further strengthening the teachings of localisation and further increasing the disintegration of medical thinking. 3. Virchow's teaching led to the neglect of the

1 etiological line since he could not perceive that anatomical transformation is not the cause only but also the result. Thus he gave a new foundation to the therapeutic nihilism of his age. Semmelweis' discovery falls into the anatomical period, in the thne of anatomical supremacy, in the time of the birth of cellular pathology. Semmelweis' teaching got in clash with the most vulnerable part of the antomic-morphological trend when his attention was shifted from the transformations of cells towards infection and its prevention. Thus Semmelw-eis far preceded his age. He did not look for the cause of puerperal fever into the transformations originating in the cells — and found the cause in the infection originating outside the organism,, and as an exception in the organism itself. He was infcransiigently fighting for the prevention of the puerperal fever and for antisepsis. It happened in this was that he got into clash with the backward trend of his age. This struggle was going on in the medical world at times when Marx and Engels had already elaborated the dialectical materialism. We have no information as to Semmelweis' having knowledge of the dialectical materialism. But in his work he undoubtedly was a genuine materialist. He was observing and analysing, and he took the world as it is in reality: he did not add anything to it and did not take away anything from it.