Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 66-68. (Budapest, 1973)

Spielmann József: Ave atque vale — Valeriu Bologa professzor emlékezetére

But on that first meeting I was not conscious of all that. I was much too happy that he was willing to direct, to supervise my work. For two decades he became to me a paternal friend, a leading light, sometimes a well-meaning and exacting critic. During this time our correspondence grew into a bulky volume, a document of our long association. Turning it over I cannot escape from the picture of the study on the third floor in the Pasteur-Institute. That was his real home, the last small rooms under the garret. "Medical history needs mountain-air", was one of his stock jokes. Throughout the years, how often did I climb the steps leading to that third floor! I rang, the door was opened, and I was overwhelmed by the familiar, stuffy smell of the books. There were 50,000 volumes in the rooms and the corridor: medical works, encyclopaedias, cultural history, technical works, history of ideas. In addition to the library there were about one thousand museum pieces in show-cases and cabinets, while the centre of this strange kingdom was occupied by the Professor's room. Professor Bologa offers me a seat, he himself sits down at his desk, opens the file with my name and starts the usual process; "Well, my son Jóska, speak!" And I, too, take out my notes from my brief-case. For twenty years, our meeting started like that, I can recollect the scene like a film. I can see the Professor, with deeper and deeper wrinkles on his face, his shoulder bendig lower, and myself, at first in the prime of youth, later with greying hair. We live in an age of rapidly changing knowledge. There is much doubt everywhere about the compulsory character of the teaching of medical history. Professor Bologa drew up many memoranda on the subject. His motive was not the partiality of the specialist, it was his concern for the education of the future generation of physicians. The experienced educator was protecting the humanistic traditions of medicine. His letters bear witness to this: "My conviction is that the history of the development of the chosen subject is of decisive importance for the student and the young physician. To-day medical training is so functional, so technical, that the history of medicine is the only tiny brook that connects it with the traditional, humanistic sources of the profession." There were two sides of Professor Bologa. The one revealing itself on festive occasions, the other on every day. The outsiders knew only the first, the brilliant speaker, the versatile scientist, the notability of the congresses highly esteemed by the best representatives of the field, the member of many academies, the charming talker who had a kind word for everybody. Professor Bologa had close connections with Hungarian medical history. On an international conference in Madrid it was on his own initiative that he remembered with much appreciation Gyula Magyary-Kossa, the recently died eminent Hungarian researcher. He often quoted his works or those of Tibor Győry Ín his own writings. The volumes of Weszprémi and Linzbauer stood beside his desk for constant reference. He was on cordial, friendly terms and corresponded with László Haranghy, György Gortvay, Ákos Palla, Gyula Jáky,