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

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

congress under the following title: Einheitsbestrebungen in der Medizin. Verhandlungen des Kongresses zur Förderung medizinischer Synthese und ärztlicher Weltanschauung (Unifying Tendencies in Medicine. Proceedings of the Congress Striving for Promotion of a Synthesis and a Unified Concept of Medicine). Quoting again

—as so many times so far

—S. Korányi [49]: "Is there a homogeneous principle for healing ? The examples of homoeopaths and quacks have already shown how absurd each attempt may be at influencing diseases and their manifestations on the basis of a homogeneous conception by using methods derived from homogeneous causes. Pewsner believes he has discovered the clue to a unified therapeutics. " (Pewsner did not apply drugs but diet). " To reaccomplish the unbroken unity of medicine and practice is today possible only if experts of the different fields attempt at meeting in the borderland of their spheres, and at finding new correlations between their special fields and enforcing also the existing ones, and

—in a joint effort

—at acquiring a deeper knowledge. At the present pace of progress the scope of actual knowledge can only be limited. Medical profession is in urgent need of a cooperation, too, between psychologists and philosophers trained in natural sciences, benefitial for all those concerned. However, I doubt that this cooperation would yield a homogeneous medical conception. What is still to be expected is a clarification of ideas, contribution of information by experts to a field in which the physician can only be a dilettante, collection of material that everyone can use according to his individual needs, his personality and following his own inclinations to create his individual conception of the world." It was doubtless that quacks appeared in great number throughout the country and actually all over Europe. Mrs. Wunderlich a magnetizing woman of Sashalom and the much later appearing Uncle Kunczi cauterizing the skin of people were also encountered in Orvosi Hetilap [50]. A swindler quack by the name of Zeilis built up a whole town in Galspach [51] on the money earned from his patients coming in endless flocks. "Even today, there is no shortage in charlatans. The influence of the magic Orient is getting more powerful each day. Theosophy, occultism, cabalism are breathed by the atmosphere of our times", Vámossy wrote in his anniversary address on Professors Korányi and Grósz [52] in 1925. In 1933 Nékám [53] reported: "Swarms of fanatics, dilettanti, speculators and quacks have appeared. The mental lability of society leads to a surfeit of mysticism, hedonism, a craze for sports and of sex." Sport plays an increasingly important part in the aspirations of the state. "There is no need for physically and mentally enervated, inactive, lamenting and daydreaming youth of the Werther type because only physical and mental toughness and soundness may offer possibilities of success in this country", it was put forth in E. Neuber's rector's inaugural address [54]. "Just imagine Chopin, Byron, Schiller and Heine as boxing champions/", it read in Nékám's paper (Dramas is Medicine) [53] in 1933. "Sparta has not bequeathed a single scientist or artist to posterity, the spirit of Athens has, however been preserved", L. Nékám stated. It is due to S. Korányi and his disciples from the school of Jendrassik as well as to physicians of the Purjesz school at Cluj that by the end of the 20s, internal medicine in Hungary had recovered his prewar status, and a department of medicine in Budapest differed neither in equipments nor in the faculties of its staff, as far as science, training or patient care were concerned, from any other European or American institutions of the same kind. Hungarian medical training acquired an international fame, Hungarian medical institutions were visited by foreigners, particularly by a great number of Americans, and Hungarian internists were welcomed and honoured guests