J. Antall szerk.: Medical history in Hungary. Presented to the XXII. International Congress for the History of Medicine / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 4. (Budapest, 1970)
ESSAYS-LECTURES - J. Antall: Absolutism and Liberalism in Health Policy in Hungary (in English)
of the foundations of medical training also fall to this period. The university of Nagyszombat, founded in 1635, was reorganized by Maria Theresa , who completed it with a medical faculty in 1769. [1] Thus Hungarian medical training took its roots from Vienna. Its foundations were laid down by Van Swieten , the disciple of Boerhaave, and the first professors of medicine at Nagyszombat and Buda were his former students. True, there were many Hungarians visiting the universities of England, the Netherlands, Germany, but as their majority was Protestant, they could not hope to receive a professorship at home. In spite of the undoubted disadvantages of that fact one must admit that those trained by the first Viennese school, by Van Swieten, formed a body having a common scientific and educational approach, which by all means had some pedagogical advantages over individual men of talent. Vienna was then the Mecca of Hungarian physicians, where they could imbibe the teachings of the masters of the first Viennese school,—so that they could pass it on at Nagyszombat, and after the transference of the university (1.777), in Buda and Pest. But in the wake of the Protestant medical students of the 17th and 18th centuries, travelling to distant cities, now there were many who—with new intentions, new ambitions—endeavoured to get acquainted with the world beyond Vienna. The first generation of physicians in Hungary had learned the scientific results of the great period of Vienna, and accepted—though here we must not carry matters too far—the ideas of enlightenment. Their medical knowledge was equal to the standards of the age, and they reacted to new medical discoveries rather quickly. For instance one or two years after Jenner's discovery there were several works in Hungarian discussing the treatment advocated by him, and vaccination was used in practice, too. THE HUNGARIAN AGE OF REFORMS AND MEDICAL PUBLIC LIFE In the 19th century the fight for national independence and for the transformation of the social order was both the imperative demand of history and the program of political progress. Emerging Hungarian intelligentia, and one of its most important strata, medical society—which, too, strongly demanded modernization—got enlisted in the service of these goals. In trying to narrow the gap with Europe they had to clear up the unsolved questions of centuries, to catch up with immense distances of backwardness. But as a reaction to the French Revolution the progressive overtures in the political order gave way to conservative tendencies. The only opportunity left for the intelligentia was spiritual and linguistical revival, the modernization of the Hungarian language. Consequently the generation of the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries is noted in medical and in general cultural history for the merits of starting something. The next generation, playing such an important role in the Hungarian "Risorgimento", followed their lead. Though under different circumstances, the same historical factors worked here as in the move148
