Varga Benedek szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 149-157. (Budapest, 1996)

TANULMÁNYOK / ARTICLES - Huszár György: Balogh Károly professzor (1895—1973) életútja és iskolája. Születésének centenáriumára. Magyar és angol nyelven

mistaken in sharply separating the professional work from the political work". (43) Balogh survived this criticism also. At the time of our 1956 uprising and freedom fight Balogh was not in Hungary. In short, it was immediately before the uprising that Balogh had been given permission to travel west in more than a decade. As guest of the Society of Austrian Dentists, he gave a lecture in Vienna on the Lymphatic Circulation of the Dental Pulp on October 20, 1956, and could return only mid-November by ship on the Danube. This trip provided a perfect political alibi, because during the uprising there were voices calling for the appointment of Balogh in place of the Communist dean. After the freedom fight was crushed by the Soviet Army, some of the medical staff and several graduate students had to leave their country. THE REFORM OF THE GRADUATE AND POSTGRADUATE EDUCATION OF DENTISTS IN HUNGARY The role of Balogh and his school in the new Dental Education System The reform of the education of dentists is a milestone in the history of dentistry in Hungary. Beginning with the academic year 1952—53, dental education was separated from general medical education at Budapest Medical University. (27, 42) In the planning and implementation of the new system of dental education, Balogh and his school played a decisive and difficult role. Until that point Hungarian dentists had considered themselves stomatologists. The use of the word ' 'stomatology ' ' was championed in the 1880's by the French professor of dentistry Emile Magitot (1833—1897). The essence of the concept of stomatology was that dental medicine (dentistry) can be taught only as a postgraduate specialty in a medical school and only after obtaining a medical diploma. (32) With the newly introduced reform of dental education the concept of stomatology, to which Balogh, too, had subscribed, was abandoned. In the foreword of his Textbook of Stomatology (1948) he was still definitely in favor of the concept of stomatology. (12) What led Balogh to give up the ideal of stomatology and to introduce the reform of dental education in Hungary? The literature of recent decades mentions the shortage of dentists caused by World War II as the one and only reason for the reform and, thereby, for the shorter training of dentists. Indeed, the events of World War II, including the deportations, caused a significant loss of dentists in Hungary and, therefore, their replacement had become a high priority. Balogh analyzed the problem and realized that while it took nine years of graduate and postgraduate training to produce a dentist under the old system, the number of years could be reduced to five with reform. But the emphasis on the shortage of dentists as a cause of the reform has allowed those professional and political reasons to be forgotten which contributed to Balogh's revised views on this issue. One such reason was the resurgence from time to time of the so-called ' 'dental technician problem". In short, the dental technicians were demanding licensure to practice as dentists after having passed an appropriate examination. (32, 38) They cited laws and regulations which were ambiguous and not quite clerar on certain points. The dental technicians, in support of their claim, referred to the shortage of dentists. The Communist system, sym-