Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 115-116. (Budapest, 19869

KISEBB KÖZLEMÉNYEK — ELŐADÁSOK - Kucharz, Eugeniusz: Dr. Odo Bujwid hozzájárulása az eszperantó fejlődéséhez (angol nyelven)

CONTRIBUTION OF DR. ODO BUJWID TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF ESPERANTO EUGENIUSZ KUCHARZ Esperanto — an international, artificial language was created by Polisch physician Lewis Lazarus Zamenhof (1859—1917) in 1887. The creation of Esperanto was connected to the idea of mutual cooperation and understanding of people from various countries. A few years after creation of Esperanto, the new international activity came into being, i. e. Esperanto movement. The basis of the movement was an international language which gave opportunity to literary, professional and social contacts among people. Dr. Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto, popularized the language, mostly among his colleagues. A lot of the first Esperantists were physicians from various countries. One of them was Odo Bujwid — an eminent Polish microbiologist. Odo Felix Bujwid was born on the 30th of November 1857 in Vilna. His father was a participant of the Polish Insurrection for independence against Russia in 1863 („The January Insurrection"), and was arrested. In 1866 the family Bujwid moved to Warsaw, and lived under very poor conditions. Primary and secondary school Bujwid passed in Warsaw. In 1872 his parents died and Odo's family was worse off then earlier. The fifteen years old Odo Bujwid had to work for keeping himself and his younger sisters. Under extremaly difficult conditions, working as crammer, he prepared for secondary school finals and in 1879 entered the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Warsaw [34, 35, 36]. He was found as talented student and decided to study microbiology, the new fascinating discipline at those times. In the years of Bujwid's university studies the famous discoveries of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur were carried out. Buwid's fascination to these scientists was realized in his futher studies in Berlin and Paris [27, 28, 29, 32, 33]. Bujwid was the first who established the institute for inoculation against rabits in Poland, and it was the first institute founded out of France. Bujwid's institute was opened in Warsaw in 1886 [8, 9]. He was also the founder of the first bacteriological laboratory in Poland (1885), and he organized there training courses for Polish physicians in bacteriology [34, 35]. Bujwid Improved the method for preparation of tuberculin. In 1885 he introduced the term "tuberculin". This finding is frequently attributed to Robert Koch [13, 14, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23]. In 1893, Bujwid got a post of head of the Department of Hygiene and Bacteriology at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. In this year he created the laboratory for production sera and vaccines [15]. Rest of his creative life he passed in Cracow. He travelled frequently abroad, attended numerous congresses and was an active and progressive in social affairs [5, 6]. Bujwid published nearly four hundred of papers [10, 11, 40]. Odo Bujwid died on the 26th of December 1942 in Cracow, at time of terrible nazi occupation [12, 37]. The contacts of Bujwid with Zamenhof began probably during their university studies. Zamen-