Varga Benedek szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 147-148. (Budapest, 1994)

TANULMÁNYOK - ESSAYS - Antall József: Az orvostörténelem helyzete Magyarországon (magyar és angol nyelven)

scholarship, and its organizational background could be improved, then after its international reputation, the profession may seize a better position at home as well. This would be essential for a better standard of professional work, and could replace the subsidiary character of many recent researches and papers. There would not be such annoying cases when a leading Hungarian professor of medicine would drop into the Semmelweis Museum only by guiding his foreign colleague who came to Budapest with a visit to our the world famous collections on his itinerary. There are many foreign educational institutions both from the West and the East which regularly bring their students to the Semmelweis Museum. This is in sharp contrast to the interest of Hungarian colleges in these collections. We are, nevertheless, optimistic when we recall those many visitors, outstanding specialists, highly cultured scientists, and enthusiastic young scholars alike, who regularly come to the Museum, and feel themselves here at home. I did not want to say more nor less. To say more would require a comprehensive presentation of our discipline. Regardless of the regrets I mentioned we do not have any inferiority complex. Even when we think of Samuel Butler's phrase, who was a contemporary of Shakespeare, that "past could not been changed even by the Almighty, but by historians only " — as there are many a scientific axiom that has been shattered down in our age, even in the most exact fields of science and medicine. Science history can teach us about all such cases, but neglecting its study obstructs even scientists from a spring of wisdom.* JÓZSEF ANTALL, Ph. D. formerly director-general of the Semmelweis Medical Historical Museum, Library and Archives * Under the auspices of Professor Emil Shultheisz the history of medicine has been involved in the curriculum of the Semmelweis Medical University since 1985/86, at the Institute for Social Medicine and for the History of Medicine. From the same academic year medical students, when finishing their studies, have been again required to write a thesis. A historical treatment on the medical education of this period is going to be elaborated soon, (the Editor's note)