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)
The most distinguished Hungarian physicians, who studied in Budapest and Vienna, acquired the most up-to-date medical knowledge. They visited the best institutes of Berlin, London, Paris and the other great European towns, called on the internationally noted specialists. Perhaps it was Virchow who exercised the greatest influence on them at that period. But we do not want to deny, not for a moment, that it was the second Viennese school—so well treated in the work of Erna Lesky [5]—which had the most direct influence on the emergence of the Hungarian medical school. The disciples—learning from other masters, too —formed an independent Hungarian medical school, known as the medical school of Pest. Although there came two generations of physicians in Hungary after the first school of Vienna, one cannot speak of a Hungarian medical school before the 1840s. Only the medical school of Pest, forming around the persons of János Balassa and Lajos Markusovszky in the middle of the 19th century, can be regarded as an independent school. This medical circle was characterized by a common medical approach, a program for public health based on up-to-date social foundations, expert knowledge reaching the standards of the leading countries, and by kindred political ideas. At the same time it was a true school, an educative training-ground for the new generation of physicians [6]. When Balassa went to Vienna with excellent recommendations and became an operative assistant under Schuh, he learnt everything he could in Vienna. It was in Vienna that the friendship of Markusovszky, Sándor Lumniczer, and Ignác Semmelweis, who all started their studies in the university of Pest and continued them in Vienna, began. Balassa was hardly elder than them but already a professor when they finished their studies. The attractive personality of Balassa combined the type of the public man, the scientist and the practising physician, he had all the qualities to make him the head of this circle, also known as Balassasociety. Markusovszky was the greatest organizer of Hungarian medical life and medical higher education, he was the driving force of the group and a leading figure of the age. The personality of Lumniczer was somewhat similar to Balassa [7]. All of them had a greater impact on medical public life than Semmelweis, but who in turn became an outstanding figure of universal medical history by discovering the aetiology of puerperal fever and by formulating the idea of prophylaxis. With his virtues and faults he embodied the modern specialist. He, together with his friends, took part in Hungarian medical public life, earned respect in higher education as a professor of the university of Budapest, and also with his articles in the Hungarian medical journals, but his personality was not suitable for a leading role, which he never strove for [8], HUNGARIAN LIBERALISM AND THE "CENTRALISTS" In the period when the most important program in Hungary was to achieve national independence and to carry through social reforms, the thoughts of liberalism were prevailing. Individual liberty, the assertion of human rights; the free play of economic forces in economic life; education is not a monopoly of 150
