Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 51-53. (Budapest, 1969)

TANULMÁNYOK - Végh Antal: Than Károly, a magyar tudományos kémia és az egyetemi kémiai oktatás megteremtője (angol nyelven)

friendship with Wurtz. Returning to Vienna in 1859 he was appointed as assistant lecturer for two years and in the spring of 1800 he qualified as "private professor" (Privat dozent) in "pharmaceutical chemistry and analytics". He tried to get a post at the Vienna Academy of Commerce, but without success—Hungary's advantage. Before during his stay in Vienna he became interested in the work of the Society for the Natural Sciences, and later he developed a close friendly and colleaguely association with its founder, Pál Bugát. Obviously it was Bugát who gave him the initiative to work out the Hungarian chemical jargon. With the easing of Austrian absolutism in the academi year 1800/01 Hungarian became the language of tuition at the University in Pest and the teachers who did not speak Hungarian left their chairs. The Professor of Chemistry, Wertheim, who was a well known organic chemist, moved to the University of Graz, without any resentment, and recommended Than as his successor. From three competitors Than, who was hardly 20 at that time, received the appointment of Professor in charge. That was partly due to the two extraordinarily warm-worded letters of recommendation by Bunsen and Redtenbacher. He delivered his first lecture on November 25th, 1800. In the introduction, after repeatedly expressing his delight at being able to lecture in Hungarian he turned to the medical students: „. . . Among the medical sciences physiology is in the closest contact with chemistry, so that the latter is an essential part of the former, and serves as a foundation for its achievements, while the extension of this foundation is one of the major conditions of the development of physiology. The efforts of the remarkable movements of modern botany are concentrated on making visible by chemical truth the laws of our bodily existense, concealed in a miraculous mist. Today's physiology does not content itself whit the understanding of external forms and mechanical processes, but feels burning necessity for a deeper, chemical comprehension of vital process." "... Rational healing cannot dispense with chemistry even at the bedside of the patient, analysing chemistry has become and indispensable instrument of the practising doctor in forming the diagnosis and finding out the stage of the illness." [4]. When Than started his university activities he found himself in a close contact with the medical faculty not only because the bulk of his students was composed of meds, but also because the chemical institute was accomodated in extremely confined circumstances in the building of the Medical Faculty at the corner of the Újvilág and Hatvani Streets (at present named after Semmelweis and Kossuth Lajos respectively), like other medical institutes struggling for more favourable conditions. It was fortunate coincidence that the representatives of the Medical Faculty and Károly Than shared the same conceptions concerning their duties. Many of them, like Than, had taken an active part in the War of Independence. All of them had graduated or studied in developed western countries and were imbued with a sense of responsibility as leaders of the intellectual life at the dawn of the new period following the compromise with Austria: their destiny was to establish the foundations of Hungarian scientific life, a modern university. Károly Than joined the circle of Balassa, and after