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
The institute Pető kept a very strict rhythm in the Institute. From early morning till late evening everybody lived according to an exact time-table. As an in-patient at the time Katalin Hídvégi remembers back on this period, which exerted a strong influence over the whole of her life, in the following way 62 : "At that time the Villányi street institute was live-in, and applicants were accepted on a first-come basis. I don't know what the total number of people at the Institute was, but I think about eighty. There were some outpatients aged from three to five, and there were also some elderly cerebral haemorrhage patients as well, all of the patients were categorised by age and diagnosis. The group of which I was a member was aged from three to fourteen. There were fourteen of us in a big dormitory. The furniture consisted offourteen plank bunkbeds and fourteen blankets. In the evenings a blanket was spread on the bunkbed, a sheet was laid on top of it, followed by another sheet and finally a blanket. There was no pillow. The assistants took great pains to ensure that everyone slept in an ideal position with extended limbs and either on their backs or on their fronts. If someone turned on their side or drew up their legs then they carefully woke them up and straitened them out nicely. If someone couldn't straighten their legs then various sandbags were used to keep them in an ideal position. At night two assistants looked after us, during the day at least eight people looked after us alone. Naturally there were also nurses, conductors and cleaners. The nurses were concerned with our bodily needs, that is they fed us, gave us drinks and bathed us. The conductors performed the exercises. Our daily routine was quite military. We were woken at six. Their aim was for all of we children, as far as we were able, to look after ourselves, that is to say that we children had to dress and wash ourselves, brush our own teeth, put away our own bedding and possibly help the assistants put away the beds. In the Institute there were, you understand, no separate spaces for dormitories, dayrooms and physiotherapy, rather we slept, ate, worked and spent our entire day in the same room. There were also chairs, and they brought in tables for mealtimes, or rather during the day they were stacked against the walls, like the bunkbeds, to make room. The blankets were spread on the floor and we did our exercises on them. We had to finish dressing, washing and eating breakfast by eight o 'clock each morning. Occasionally, we didn't eat there but the tables were set up in the so-called outpatient 's department and we had to go there, or rather they took those of us who couldn't walk, since there were, of course, some such in our group. Here they laid such total stress on the development of independence that even someone whose hands were paralyzed had to try and look after himself or herself. Either they would wedge a hairbrush in between the planks of a bunkbed, and then one could brush one's hair by moving one's head against it, or they struggled somehow to complete the action with their limited movement. The conductors were most strictly forbidden to help us in satisfying our physical needs. But in the last ten minutes before eight they started to help and naturally nobody stayed hungry. But as far as it was possible everybody had to complete his own task on his own, each of us had Interview with Katalin Hídvégi, In: Forrai J.: O.e.
