Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 69-70. (Budapest, 1973)
KISEBB KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Vida, Mária: Hell Miksa (1720 — 1792), a polihisztor csillagász (angol nyelven)
at the same time a surgeon and an obstetrician, who rashly applied his discovery to all sorts of nervous complaints which were supposed to have originated in the electricity allegedly circulating in the organism. But previous to him Franz Anton Mesmer, a Vienna physician had applied a similar "magnetic" curing already in 1769 with great success. Mesmer's method was based on restoring the balance of magnetism, presumingly existing in all living beings. It was Miksa Hell who first directed Mesmer's attention to the healing effect of iron, that is how the doctor started to use strong horseshoe magnets. But it was again Hell who in the 1770s, at the height of Mesmer's success, was the first to protest against this method of curing. In a writing dated from January 29 1775 entitled "Erklärung über das zweite Schreiben Herrn D. Mesmers die Magnetkur betreffend an das Publikum", he challenged and publicly refuted the effectiveness of the magnetic cure. In the same year he tried to prove in two further articles that the significance of the magnetic phenomena lies in their application in physics but not in the field of curing. In the first ("Max Hell's Schreiben über die alhier in Wien entdeckte Magnetenkur, an einen seiner Freunde") he exposed a concrete case of a magnetic cure, while in the second ("Unparteischer Bericht der alhier gemachten Entdeckungen der künstlichen Stahlmagneten in verschiedenen Nervenkrankenheiten") he examined the use of artificial steel-magnets in curing. Following this critisism Mesmer had three further years of gleaming success in Vienna, but in 1778, as a consequence of a scandal connected with the alleged curing of a blind piano artist, an imperial decree banned him from the Austrian capital. In the question of magnetism Hell, of course, was right, but we cannot discard Mesmer simply as a quack. Nowadays his notions —after due critical reappraisal —are once more made use of by psychology and medicine, within a limited area. The merits of Miksa Hell were once recognized by the world of learning. Several learned societies, including those of Paris, Bologna, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Göttingen and Droutheim, elected him their member and in 1780 he won even a royal decoration when at the wish of King Stanislaus of Poland he sent him the model of the movable and turnable cover he used for protecting his astrological instruments. In return the Polish king sent him a golden medal and a letter of thanks. Hell continued to work in Vienna for almost forty years. Twice he returned to Hungary to install two observatories: in 1776 that of the Lyceum of Eger and one year later another one in Buda, in connection with the transference of the University of Nagyszombat. In addition to the three observatories established by him on Hungarian soil all his activities show that Hell wanted to see science strive in his native country and was ready to work for it. His only surviving picture, too, witnesses his attachment to Hungary: the copperplate made in 1771 shows him in a Lappish dress (a reference to his expedition to Lappland), but under it the Hungarian gala atilla peeps out. And he had it written on his tombstone: "Maximilian Hell . . . Hungarus".* * Magyarul megjelent: Vida Mária: Hell Miksa. Orvosi Hetilap 1972. 44. 2661-2663.
