Kapronczay Károly szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 218-221. (Budapest, 2012)

KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Monos Emil—László Molnár—Lajos Szollár—Osmo Hänninen: Rácz Sámuel, az első magyar nyelven írott élettan-tankönyv írója

MONOS E. - MOLNÁR L - SZOLLÁR L. - HÄNNINEN, O.: Sámuel Rácz

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In 1789 Samuel Rácz also published the first physiology textbook in Hungarian (Fig 1). It was one of the very first textbooks written in a popular language (KOVACH AND SCHULTHEISZ 1981, MONOS 1989); it appeared only 32 years after Albrecht von Haller’s textbook on physiology, which was written in Latin the international language of science in those days (HALLER 1757). (Fig. 2.)

Selected parts of Rácz’s textbook on physiology were published in English in 1981 in the Proceedings of the International Congress of Physiological Sciences (KOVÁCH AND SCHULTHEISZ 1981).

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Fig. 2. The front page of Albrecht von Haller’s physiology textbook published in 1757.

It is the first textbook of its kind, but it was published in Latin, the language of science in those days.

The Hungarian poet Mihály Csokonai Vietéz congratulated the famous Mr. Samuel Rácz in 1793 with the following poem:

"Uram örvendez a magyar Haza, hogy a mostani Eskulap fiait hallja Magyar hangon szólam;

Hogy görög-módi ruháit Hippokrates letette S magyar köntösre váltotta S már azt is megszerette"

Its English translation by Z. Rudnai sounds as follows: