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

TANULMÁNYOK - Székely Sándor: Az 1876-os közegészségügyi törvény előkészítéséről (angol nyelven)

that "The Medical Corps is no longer to be considered an exclusive body, but in the future it has to include all Hungarian physicians."

5 Soon the armed liberation struggle started against the Austria of the Habsburgs, and so there was no possibility to carry out—or rather to begin carrying out—the proposal, for the above mentioned data was obviously much too optimistic. The War of Independence raised other kinds of sanitary problems. Now the emphasis was on national defence, on the organization and improvement of medical care for the army (in this respect one important measure was carried out : the civilian and army health organizations were unified, and even though this meant the subordination of civilian health to army medicine, nonetheless, it brought unity), and on the control of epidemics and hospital affairs (care for the wounded), etc. So there was no health legislation in 1848-49, only a number of ministerial and governmental decrees were issued. After the defeat of the War of Independence, the reactionary Bach system revoked every law, decree and measure adopted by the independent Hungarian government. The ministerial health department was also disbanded, once again the Governor General's Council took charge of public administration, and health affairs passed into the jurisdiction of the medical committee of the Council. CONGRESSES OF HUNGARIAN PHYSICIANS AND NATURALISTS The efforts of the physicians and other intellectuals interested in natural science to rally in an organization were also among the bourgeois democratic movements of the Reform Age. In the first phase of its history, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which was founded in 1825 and was actually able to begin operation only in 1830, gave real consideration only to the cultivation of Hungarian language and literature—although in addition to its four departments of social sciences it had also a department of mathematics and a department of natural sciences. By the end of the 1830's it seemed necessary to organize an institution which would deal with medical science and the natural sciences, encouraging participation from wide strata of those interested in these fields. On the initiative and with the active organizing work of dr. Ferenc Bene, the country's Physician-General, this need gave rise to the organization of Hungarian Physicians and Naturalists (MOT after the Hungarian initials), whose activities were directed by a permanent central committee. The principal activity of the MOT was to arrange meetings and congresses in various parts of the country. The first MOT Congress was held in Pest* in 1841. 5 György Gortvay: Az újabbkori magyar orvosi művelődés és egészségügy története (The History of Recent Hungarian Medical Education and Health Affairs). Budapest 1953. Vol. I. p. 222. * Part of present-day Budapest which later was formed in 1872 from the union of Buda and Óbuda on the right and Pest on the left bank of the Danube.