Kapronczay Károly szerk.: Orvostörténeti Közlemények 182-185. (Budapest, 2003)
KÖZLEMÉNYEK - COMMUNICATIONS - MUZUR, Amir: Hungarian doctors and the „Golden Age" (1884-1914) of Opatija (Croatia). (Magyar orvosok és Abbázia „aranykora") (1884-1914)
According to a hypothetical order of stepping onto the "local scene," the next would be Julius Mahler, a Dresden gynecologist and cardiologist, who lived in Opatija's Villa Jezica while, during summer, practiced in Hungarian Buzias. He was, nevertheless, no one else but Gyula Mahler, the son of the Jewish couple Dezső Mahler and Róza Krause from Földvár, Hungary, born in 1870 and later married to the Viennese Klara Eckel. Mahler opened his 60-bed sanatorium in the district called Drazica, having had estimated the local climate mild enough to enable the patients dwelling in the open air also during the major part of winter. In addition, Mahler considered the highly relative air humidity, combined a high stable air pressure, good conditions for coronary patients' rehabilitation (but he was accepting also neurotics, diabetics, and others). When Mahler died in 1923, 13 after having had finally obtained the Italian citizenship, the sanatorium was inherited by his wife, Klara, while the medical management was taken over by Dr. Luciano Chiandussi. In the 1930s, the sanatorium Dr. Mahler changed its owner once again, but this time it was also renamed as Casa di cura Doit. Hon>at 14 (presently Hotel Royal). Doctor Julius (Gyula) Winkler (born in 1871, in Somkerch), a son of the Hungarian Béla Winkler and Rosa Markovié, worked in Opatija between 1902 and 1914, first as a specialist for the diseases of women, chest, and skin, and later as a dentist. At summers he was seeing patients in Bálványosfürdő. 13 Taking refuge in Budapest in 1914, he came back to Opatija in 1923. A few Hungarian physicians "walked through" Opatija without leaving any significant trace behind. Similarly to the case of Mahler, Buzias was the original practicing place for Rudolf Sugár, who worked in Opatija at Villa Nada. Doctor Rosenberg came to Opatija as a Pest Printers' Trade Union physician, and practiced in Villa Guttenberg (later sanatorium Adriatica). Béla von Gámán (born in 1866 in Kolozsvár, now Rumanian Cluj-Napoca) opened around 1911 a small sanatorium in Volosko port, and devoted it to diaetetic treatments. Gámán later worked as a bath physician in Rogaska and in the Tatra Mountains (1916-1923), became a university professor in Cluj and in Pest, where he died in 1946. 16 László von Gámán (born in 1897), Béla's son, appears between the two world wars as a physician in Dr. Mahler's sanatorium. The First World War destroyed the k.u.k. Abbázia Idylle quite suddenly. The new Italian authorities feared the restoration of Austria so tremendously, that the Italian consular offices both at Vienna and Budapest were delaying to issue visas for many old guests and doctors in order to avoid their return to Opatija. 17 However, Opatija was also interesting for a new generation of Hungarian physicians. At the beginning of the 1920s, the Neues Sanatorium Dr. Schalk (today Villa Ambassador) becomes Nuova casa di cura Dott. Lakatos, with 100 beds. Viktor Lakatos was a Hungarian who had already lead a similar institution in Baden near Vienna, while in Opatija he took over mostly orthopaedic and surgical reconvalescents, as well as gynaecological and internist patients. He soon was 13 DAR [Rijeka State Archives]. JU-8, box 73. 14 Abbázia e la sua guida turistica / Touristenfuehrer von Abbázia. Fiume: Stabilimento tipografico de "La Vedetta d'Italia" s.a., 1937. 1 Adressbuch der oesterreichischen Riviera. Abbázia: Franz Kreisel, n.d. 16 Gulyás: o.e. 17 DAR [Rijeka State Archives]. JU-8, box 678 and 679.
