Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 54. (Budapest, 1970)
TANULMÁNYOK - Kubinyi András: The Social and Economic Standing of Persons Concerned with Health Treatment in Buda at the Turn of the 15th and 16th Centuries (angol nyelvű közlemény)
that both the trained, university graduate physicians and the apothecarians belonged to the financially most opulent and socially leading stratum of the bourgeoisie, even when they were not in the king's service. Only the doctor of medicine was considered an "intellectual", whose social prestige was greatly enhanced by his university degree, though his fortune obtained through the high fees would have in itself been enough to achieve that. As the medieval town was governed by the merchants, it is perhaps more than accidental that the physicians who reached the higher circles of the town followed the example of their patrician fellow-citizens and invested part of their fortune in trade. At the same time the prestige of the apothecarians, who generally lacked a university degree, was due precisely to commerce. Their reputation was based on being the member of one the most important groups of merchants, and not on their role in curing. The appraisal of the barbers and bath managers must be based on quinte different considerations. They were counted among the tradesmen, consequently their social position corresponded to that of the guild members, the middle bourgeoisie of the medieval town. Although according the foreign sources they —especially the bath managers — were not respected, and were regarded as dishonest (unehrlich), in Buda neither the correctness, not the incorrectness of this view can be demonstrated [113]. Financially the barbers belonged to the more illustrious, and the bath managers to the lesser tradesmen, but even from the former only those could rise to the level of patricians or still higher, who were in the service of the sovereign. NOTES For notes see the Hungarian text of the article. [4] See above, note 1. Some additions: Lőrinc Brixeni (not Brissiai) was not a surgeon, as claimed by Fógel, but a physician of King Ulászló II. (...) The hermit Leo, mentioned in 1514 as royal physician, was the Queen's physician already in 1500. (...) It might be worth while mentioning that Jean Lartigaut, who used the charter, explained the abbreviation R hs M tis erroneously as Regalis Maiestatis, and consequently called him royal physician. [5] He failed to settle the whole sum. (...) By comparison let us quote some data. The yearly tax due to the king after one serf-plot was 1 florin, the price of an ox 2 — 3 florins. In 1489, when Archbishop Hippolit offered 200 florins to his physician, an important "free royal city" like Kassa (to-day Kosice, Czechoslovakia) paid the king 1000 florins as tax. (...) The successors of Hippolit, too, kept private physicians. In 1510 the physician of Primate Bakócz was a man called János. (...) [9] His predecessor, Lőrinc Brixeni, had a claim of forty florins on Podmaniczky, a baron, which must have been an unpaid fee. (...) [12] The meeting of the medical faculty of Vienna university on 18th June 1494, also attended by the Buda physician, Gergely Kuntstock, discussed the charges that the doctors visit the patients only against the payment of two ducats (roughly corresponding to two Hungarian florins.) (...) Two ducats for a visit is such an incredibly high sum that by all means it must be regarded as
