Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 55-56. (Budapest, 1970)

Előszó (Szabó Zoltán)

/ he creators of history are the never decreasing waves of human generations, the -*- nameless millions of mankind. Their constructive knowledge, their zealous work, their working life or struggling death formed culture, civilisation, carried and realized the historic-social progress and development. At a given time among the lines of nameless crowds there are taking form on the historic-social horizon and prospects of the past and future continent to continent, from country to country, from century to century countenances of great personalities, whose name will be learned and will be respected by descendants and contemporaries all over the world. Their greatness is arising always from the fact : they have a profounder and further insight, they are able to recognize the new, the so far unknown natural and social laws. They perceive the necessity of progress, its characteristic trands, their social-scientific-revolutionary tasks. They are serving with their talent and knowledge, with their whole life the progress, benefit, happiness and prosperity of mankind. We are honouring as such a great personality of the Hungarian and universal medicine : Ignaz Philip Semmelweis. The decades of his life and work are at the same time the period of social progress, of social revolts, of the advance of sciences and new discoveries. The morphological way of looking in the medicine was gaining ground; its modernity was meant by the opinion : diseases are the changes of organism and are not mystic, from the organism independent phenomena. Morphological way of thinking, deep knowledge and thorough grounding are giving the characteristic lines of Semmelweis' up-to-date medical views. His way of thinking turns into a new, lively activity which is really breaking through the limits of his age : his new aetiological, morphological thinking. He applied in his research-work and medical practice those methods of the modern medicine as the relentless objectivity, many experiments and the statistical methods of analysing the new informations. Morphological grounding, aetiological thinking, objective, scientific investigating methods are characteristic of his medical thinking and make him superior to his average contemporaries. All these together are the sources and conditius sine qua non of his discovery as he writes following in his study (The Aetiology and Prophylaxis of Puerperal Fever, 1861.) : ''If the puerperal fever is arising from the athmospheric, cosmic, telluric influences, then it is inevitable ;... 2 Orvostörténeti Közlemények 55—56.