Kapronczay Károly szerk.: Orvostörténeti Közlemények 200-201. (Budapest, 2007)
TANULMÁNYOK — ARTICLES - FORRAI, Judit: History of a Special Healing Method for Motor-disordered Children: Conductive Education - A mozgásszervi betegségben szenvedő gyermekek egyik sajátos gyógymódja, a konduktív nevelés története
After getting to know Pető's work Bárczi persuaded the higher authorities to accept it, and founded a Movement Therapy Department with an outpatient department for 14 patients. László Focher, a neurologist from the state home for destitute children, picked out the most serious and hopeless cases for Pető 50 . Pető started his hard work fanatically, working out his method and its practical implementation. He started his work in very adverse circumstances. In after the war Budapest there were hardly any windows left intact, and buildings were almost all damaged. There was neither electricity nor water supply. Pető got two rooms in the Institute with a corridor where they even had a bathtub and they used it not only for bathing but also for washing up 51 . The children's food and the Institute's expenses were defrayed from grants given by the American Joint. (In the starving capital the children in the Institute got so-called Truman frankfurters which was made of soya beans and were named after the American president.) They couldn't afford to pay Pető' a salary for three years, he worked for free, without any payment. Pető's movement therapy contained physiotherapy, exercise therapy, breathing therapy and motor movement education. Bárczi expected the following from the new department: "This is not just about the co-operation between doctors and special teachers, but the students of our college as well as medical students will receive training in, among many other things, the after care of polio and cerebral palsy. From this department we expect that within the framework of a uniform treatment the effects of a homogeneous methodical and group education will bring their fruits. " 52 Pető started working using the above method with live-in children who were believed to be incurable, and after one year a commission reported that the condition of the children had improved remarkably. The news spread, and they began to treat not only live-in patients but outpatients as well. The chosen method needed a long time to show its effects. In the Institute there were more and more children and the number of the adult patients also grew nicely. There were lots of possibilities for work around the children. Mrs. Székely the first conductor started her work with Pető: 3 "On the first floor there was a room, where the patients laid on wooden pallets. In the big room, where the children were accommodated, stood a cage with parrots in it. Above it a Rákosi 4-picture, underneath sat Pető. These two bald heads were rather strange and made me laugh. My work was that if one of the nurses, Matild, told me that a child had to go to the loo, then I had to pick that child up and take him or her to put on the potty. This was my work from morning till evening. There was a strongly mentally disabled girl. Usually I had to take her. Once it looked like Pető was watching me when the girl was in my arms, she had a cold, her nose and everything was running. I thought "Why should I always wipe this child's nose?" and said: "Come trucks. (Dr. Ferenc Gáti: Remembering the decades of domestic Children's and youth welfare after the liberation. Gyermek és Ifjúság Védelem 1986. 34-35.) 50 Pető, András: Conductive Movement Therapy as Special Education. Gyógypedagógia, 1. (1955) 15-21. (Annotated and abridged version by A. Sutton in the Conductor 18, (1993) 37-39.) 51 Hári, Mária: O.c.ll. 32 Bárczi, Gusztáv: Magyar Orvosi Szemle 25th February, 1948. 53 Interview with Ilona Székely. In: Forrai J.: O.e. 93-97. 54 Mátyás Rákosi was the leader of the Hungarian Communist Party from 1945 to 1956.
