Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 89-91. (Budapest, 1980)

TANULMÁNYOK - Magyar, Imre: Belgyógyászati irányzatok Magyarországon a két világháború között (angol nyelven)

this statement seems verified. It was largely due to Korányi's activity that Virchow's cellular pathology was replaced by a functional way of thinking. In the meantime diagnostics developed at a tremendous pace, and it was again attached to Korányi that functional diagnostics was established. Physicians were amazed by the technical development of diagnostic methods. S. Korányi still demonstrated with his own hands to his assistant I. Rusznyák how to percuss in a large emergency military hospital during World War I. With the spread of X-ray examinations and other mechanical procedures, this simple diagnostic method was becoming less and less appreciated by internists. The words of S. Korányi from his paper on old and new diagnostics published immediately after World War I [10] is likely to appear valid also today. It is worth quoting from his article just because of its present implications: "We, more advanced in age, having been acquainted with internal medicine at clinics thirty or more years ago—judging after myself—have found its most imposing quality and greatest beauty in its extreme simplicity, taking delight in how much can be learned by eyes, touch, percussion and auscultation if results of these methods are effectively utilized. The clinician used to work in the manner of the drawing artist who captures by sketching in some well-chosen, graceful lines everything which belongs to the character of a face and which makes it recognizable. Since then, applied science has been gaining ground in practice outshining all that is congenial to the artist's awareness and perception. The time it had been valid cannot be restored and nobody may wish to restore it. However, some of the simplicity and the enhanced beauty of the old clinic and old practice should and could be preserved. Internal medicine is becoming more and more an applied science. Our aim is that it should be completely so. However, economy, as in a more developed example as ours, of applied science, i. e. techniques, is also a very important principle. This principle embraces that something to be reached easily should be done so; what is to be directly achieved should be sought in no other way; something to be completed in a short time should not be prolonged, and something which we are capable of doing ourselves should not be done by seeking the help of other people. With this view in mind, we should endeavour to make readily accessible everything which we have learned with the help of instruments, one more beautiful than the other and expensive, too, by developing instruments within everybody's reach, adjusting them to the requirements of new tasks to be solved. The enumerated examples illustrate that this aim can be achieved in many cases, and if studying it thoroughly enough something, though not everything, of the noble simplicity of diagnostics can be preserved having made the creation of the old Vienna school of Skoda so admirable, and the greatest practical value of which lay in that it could be applied to every patient by every physician.'''' Nevertheless, internal medicine was menaced not only by an excessive degree of mechanization but also by several attempts at establishing a unified system of diseases, and at treating them on the basis of this principle. It was also S. Korányi who firecly criticized each such attempt. In his study of "Internal Medicine and Science" written in 1925 [32] he voiced an outright protest against systematization of internal medicine and pointed out the basic difference existing between medical activity and science. This should rather stand here quoting him in person : "Medicine cannot be considered a science". S. Korányi stated. "Medicine is different in structure. Unity would be sought in vain in its content and methodology. The physician hardly has a methodology of his own. What his body of knowledge actually is, is composed of what he borrows from physics, chemistry, physical chemistry, biology, physiology,