Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 60-61. (Budapest, 1971)

TANULMÁNYOK - Ormos Pál: Hódmezővásárhely egészségügyi fejlődése

Summary The town of Hódmezővásárhely lies between two rivers, the Tisza and the Maros. Previous to the 10th century, the ravages of the Turks, there were seventeen villages on its territory, all destroyed by the wars. The surrounding marshes were drained in the second half of the last century. The town paid its commutation in 1875 to its landlords, the Károlyi family, and became an independent municipality. At present its population is about 55 thousands. As earlier the town did not have any industries and its agriculture did not lure many newcomers, the number if the inhabitants did not change much in the last hundred years. Up to the 19th century there was no physician at Hódmezővásárhely. The itinerant doctors of the 18th century soon moved over as their services were not much in demand. The people preferred to keep a "cattle doctor", who was asked to cure men, too. Urged by the legal adviser of the Károlyi estate, Hódmezővásárhely employed the first town-physician, Mátyás Toperczer in 1825, with the salary of Ft 600 p.a. It was included in the terms of employment that he should demand no fees from the poor. In 1836 two further physicians came in the town. The first pharmacy owned by András Simonides, opened in 1812, the second in 1837. In the first part of the 19th century Hódmezővásárhely was a county seat, so in 1828 it was decided to set up a hospital there. The scheme was realized only after the great cholera epidemic of 1831 and was built in 1833. Beside this county hospital a town hospital was established only in 1859, mostly for the benefit of the old and the deserted instead of the ill. In 1885 the distinguished professor of ophthalmology, József Imre, recommended the establishment of an ophthalmologic department, and from 1886 he became the first physician in the town working exclusively in a hospital. His name is inseparably connected with the rise of the hospital and the public health conveniences in the town. That was pretty necessary as even in the last decade of the century hardly more than one third of the town populace lived longer than thirty years. The activities of the physicians gathering around József Imre were not simply confined to the treatment of the ill but they were active in health instruction and propaganda, too. Thus they were able to improve the mortality rate by more than ten per cent in a decade. It was during this period that sanitary inspection by the authorities (of foodstuffs, medicaments, drinks, restaurants and the marketplace) was started. By 1900 the situation improved to the extent that there were twenty-three physicians at the disposal of the inhabitants. In directing the hospital Imre was succeeded by Lajos Bakay and later by Antal Genersich. It was under the latter that the new hospital was built in 1911. During World War I all the physicians were called up to service and Genersich alone was left at his place. In addition to the hospital, a People's Sanatorium was established in 1910. There treatment and care was free and only for the poor. But the war paralyzed the sanatorium, too. The grave situation following the war was aggrevated by the Rumanian occupation, lasting for more than a year, which nearly completely