Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 73-74. (Budapest, 1975)

SZEMLE KÖNYVEKRŐL - Ruttkay László: Jeszenszky (Jessenius) János és kora, 1566—1621 Budapest, 1971 — Junas, J.: Súbor 12 fotopohl'adnic Ján Jessenius 1566—1621

merit of Jessenius was his effort to raise the position of surgery, then in low esteem. His Institutiones Chirurgicae contains many advanced ideas and methods, although on the whole it prefers the well-tried conservative practices. All the medical writings of Jessenius show a kind of plurality, which in fact was general with all his contemporaries: realistic observations and novel views were mixed with absurd or naive (sometimes occult) explanations and suggestions. Beside his sensible dermatological findings the greatest medical achievement of Jessenius lies in his role of the teacher and popularizer of new medical ideas, which included the publishing of the disputes held by his students. These tracts show the state of medical thinking in Central Europe at the turning of the Kith and 17th centuries. Jessenius's interests were too wide to make him a specialist doctor. Right from his early life he was interested in philosophy and political theory as well, in addition to being a conscientious teacher. His activities as professor and rector at Wittenberg, and later his efforts to modernize Charles University in Prague, are described in details, and Ruttkay completes the picture by giving an extensive account on the state and customs of these two universities, making the work an interesting piece of cultural history. Jessenius had deep Lutheran convictions and these soon involved him in the political development of Bohemia, out of which the Thirty Years' War grew out. The details of this course leading to the scaffold are well told, and though they fall outside medical history proper, they show that Central Europe, always a political crossroads, was a difficult place even for a scholar-physician. The war caught up Jessenius not only in the physical sense, but also affected his intellectual and spiritual standing: he could not stand aloof from the fight of the Bohemian Estates against the bigotry of Ferdinand II of Habsburg. As a man having good personal contacts with the land of his ancestors he was sent several times to Hungary to help conclude the alliance with Bethlen's Transylvania, and these missions made him one of the chief defendants and a martyr when Bohemia was subdued after the Battle of the White Mountain. Unfortunately Ruttkay could not live to see the publication of his book and died while it was under the press. The editors of the manuscript (Antall, Birtalan and Buzinkay) made a good work in improving the text of the cultivated but in some ways amateurish author. Ruttkay's failure to make use of the results of modern historical scholarship is remedied by the historical introduction of K. Kapronczay, while Gy. Birtalan attempts to find the place of Jessenius in contemporary medicine. This latter chapter translated into English, together with an essay on Jessenius provide a useful English-language summary to the work, published by the Semmelweis Medical Historical Museum and Library. The nearly 80 year old author of the Hungarian work took great pains to prove the Hungarian (i. e. Magyar) origin of Jessenius. His efforts grew out from the national-minded school of historiography prevailing in Europe before World War II. While the fact that Jessenius was an "eques Hungarus", a descendent of the Hungarian smaller nobility, is indisputable, it is impossible to tell if Jessenius identified himself with the Hungarian nobility (mostly, but not always speaking Magyar in addition to Latin), or with all the speakers of the