Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 81. (Budapest, 1977)

TANULMÁNYOK - Ehrentheil, O. F.: Oliver Wendell Holmes és Semmelweis Jgnác egy és negyed századról visszatekintve (angol nyelven)

deeply disappointed and hurt because he was only given the right to teach obstetrics using the manikin and this represented a humiliation for him. Erna Lesky [18] however who had studied the Semmelweis case very thoroughly, has shown that it had been in fact not a humiliation but the first big victory which his famous friends Skoda and Rokitansky had won over the reactionary enemies in the Imperial Department of Education. Lesky commented literally: "the ease Semmelweis ceases on this point to be a historical and begins to be a psychological case". Schürer [19c] even questioned whether this irrational move of Semmelweis may have been caused by the mental illness which became manifest a few years later. In Budapest he became director of the obstetric ward of the Rochus Hospital in May 1851 and in July 1855 he became Professor and chairman of the Department of Obstetrics at the University of Budapest. In this capacity Semmelweis had an elevated position in a country which was at that time backward compared to Austria. In 1856 Johann Klein, the professor and chief of the First Obstetrical University Clinic died. Semmelweis did not even apply for the job but his friends Skoda and Rokitansky submitted his name. According to Lesky [18] he was not accepted because he had not published anything; research and propagation of knowledge being one of the requirements for this position. Carl Brown who became successor of Klein had published a large textbook of obstetrics and gynecology [27] together with J. Chiari and J. Spaeth. Thus it was not his enemies who had interfered with Semmelweis' academic progress but his own unexplained aversion to publish the results of his research and doctrine. F. Kiwisch [25] one of the strongest opponents of Semmelweis had knowledge of the English literature but reported about it in a rejecting and denigrating way. Semmelweis explained the difference between the English Contagionists and his own doctrine in an article in the Orvosi Hetilap in 1860. This article was printed in Hungarian language but hardly crossed the Hungarian border. Why did Semmelweis not publish earlier? Schürer [19c] suspected that his bilingual upbringing (Hungarian and German) may have produced difficulties in German grammar and spelling (which however is not a plausible explanation). Was it a psychological block as Semmelweis himself had hinted ? The fact remains that 13 years passed between his discoveries and the publication of his book in 1861. This his masterwork appeared in German language and had the title: Die Aetiologie, der Begriff und die Prophylaxis des Kindbettfiebers (The Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Puerperal Fever). [24] This work is regarded as a classic in the history of medicine. However F. Schürer who wrote a biography of Semmelweis in 1905 remarked that the book "contains a lot of interesting observations, explanations, experiences, etc. but in so disadvantageous arrangement that the whole book is more confusing than instructing". [19c] Semmelweis gave a good account of the English contagionists and has enumerated the difference between his doctrine of conveyance of decaying matter and the English doctrine of contagiousness in eleven long paragraphs. He stated that the English had found a part of the truth but not the whole truth. ' It is interesting that in his polemic against contagiousness of P.F. Semmelweis used points similar to the arguments Meigs had used against Holmes, specifically that anyone sick with variola may produce variola in a healthy person, but that one