Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 69-70. (Budapest, 1973)
SZEMLE KÖNYVEKRŐL - Bödy, P: Joseph Eötvös and the Modernization of Hungary, 1840—1870 (Antall, József)
activities. The main items of this programme were, however, ignored even by the leading reformist politicians, maintains Body, putting a special emphasis on the difference of opinion existing between Eötvös and Kossuth. The separate centralist viewpoint emerges most clearly in such questions as the reform of the counties, Parliament, education, the emancipation of the serfs, and communalmunicipal policy. We agree with the author that the centralists went furthest in their planned political model, in social and cultural policy and in adopting the liberal doctrines. In Body's interpretation they thus appear clearly as the propagators and intermediators of western democracy. But in our opinion the portrait is paler, the presentation is less satisfactory in the case of those men, first of all Kossuth, who were fighting over the more immediate questions of self-government, national separateness (not yet independence) and political power, who tried to reconcile the conflicting interests concerning the abolition of serfdom. The need for considering the practical political questions in the various phases becomes especially obvious in view of the fact that it was Kossuth and the other representatives of the reformist policy standing near him who undertook to implement at least part of the programme of the centralists when the political situation made it possible. Body follows the course of Eötvös in the revolution of 1848 and in the subsequent war of independence, a period when his behaviour evoked a controversy not abating up to this day. The author sees three issues where Eötvös played an important role in 1848. First as author of a proposal calling for a new state contract between Hungary and the Habsburgs; secondly in his criticism of the social side of the reforms : the inadequate solution of the county-reform, of the emancipation of the serfs and of the system of parliamentary election. (Unlike most of his fellow-statesmen Eötvös clearly recognized the interdependence of the social and the nationality questions.) Thirdly it was Eötvös who introduced a bill on public instruction the free use of native languages as the medium of instruction. This proposal was also rejected by Parliament. The emigration of Eötvös in 1848 is explained by the light of the well-known sources. The author is right in pointing out the continuity in Eötvös's political thinking, that the notion of a "divided" Eötvös, the separation of his pre1848 and post1848 years —attempted some years ago by some Hungarian authors —is untenable. Eötvös's critique of the revolution was also a deep-going self-examination. In Body's view Eötvös attributed the tragedy of 1849 mainly to two factors: the conservative character of the reforms of 1848, and the nationalist movements. It is an undisputed fact that in the critical retrospections undertaken after the lost struggle both Eötvös and Zsigmond Kemény looked for the mistakes and analysed the policies which they considered to have been mistaken. This was natural for they were active politicians who felt a deep responsibility for the fate of their country. But the historian, investigating on behalf of posterity, must not fail to mention that Hungary's cause was lost not because of some inner political mistake, or due to the failure to pass certain reforms. The fall of Hungary was caused by the power-relations of contemporary Europe, by the possibilities of the Habsburgs for political manoeuvering, and by the fact that
