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
92 Comm, de Hist. Artis Med. 218—221 (2012) When Robert Tigerstedt was invited to become a professor at the University of Helsinki, to his home country he started many practical things. He took also as his responsibility to promote health knowledge among the citizens. He wrote also a short physiology textbook. As he was more familiar with Swedish language the textbook had to be translated into Finnish. The book was printed in Kuopio 1903. As Alfred Nobel's friend Robert Tigerstedt helped this industrialist to formulate the regulations of Nobel prices, which are highly respected throughout the world. One can say that the Swedes use fortunes which originated from Russia and Finnish regulations to prize leading scientists. It is easy to understand that one of the prizes is devoted to discoveries in physiology or medicine. Discussion Medical terminology, especially those generally accepted terms describing body functions are very important in the people's language for every nation. Without these key words people are not able to describe their health problems and diseases to the health care personnel. They can neither effectively record the anamnesis nor to treat the problems of their patients. This is necessary also for the teaching of health knowledge at schools and higher educational institutions. The public media need those words to be successful in spreading information, too. Advice cannot be successful if the people do not understand the message. The Finno-Ugric people form a special group as the majority of nations surrounding them in Europe speak Indo-European languages. The scientific medical terminology is based on Latin and Greek. They are easily understandable for many Europeans as their languages are related to Latin. Fig. 5. Cover page of Elias Lönnrot's book "Suomalaisen Talonpojan Kotilääkäri (Home Doctor of Finnish Farmer) reprinted in 2002
