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—D. Karasszon: Victor Babes and the Medical School of Pest (in English)
knowledge and vast reading. Here young Babes received much which later made him a profound scientist and brought him world fame as the researcher of the pathomorphology of diseases. This was due to the fact that Scheuthauer —like Rokitansky in Vienna and Bichat in Paris—became the centre of a whole medical school, as he was not only a great scientist, who attained lasting achievements not only in his direct field, pathological anatomy, but in medical history as well, and made his students aware of the most up-to-date results of sicence [10]. The diffusing effects of his vast knowledge were most directly experienced by his assitants, whom he selected with a rare knowledge of human character, and who were greatly encouraged and led in their work by his many advice. It was not by chance that during his twenty years of teaching activity twelve of his students became university professors, and his disciples included Victor Babes , Kálmán Budaÿ, Kálmán Czakó, Ferenc Hutyra, Ottó Pertik, Hugó Preisz, Ferenc Tangl, Lajos Török and others, who were all irresistibly attracted to and influenced by the eccentric, morose, but remarkably suggestive personality of Scheuthauer . Mihály Lenhossék as a student spent some years in the anatomopathological institute of Scheuthauer , as he often said later, these years had exercised un unforgettably strong impression on his most responsive years [17]. József Eötvös, who was then Minister of Education, had a histopathological department set up for Scheuthauer, which functioned in a one-storied building, originally built for an infants' nursery, in 47 Mária Street [18]. After the retiring of professor Arányi, who was succeeded by Scheuthauer, the 1st AnatomoPathological Institute also moved here in 1873, Babes , too, came here to work. Babes worked with Scheuthauer from 1876 till 1884. That period is not without interest seen from the aspect of the history of the anatomo-pathological institutes of the University [19]. The staff then consisted of the professor (Scheuthauer) , two assistants, one paid apprentice, an undefined number of unpaid apprentices, and two servants. Between 1876 and 1880 Victor Babes was first assistant, and after that until 1884 was private professor ("Privatdo¾ent") at Scheuthauer. Between 1882 and 1886 Ferenc Hutyra was the second assistant and Ottó Pertik the apprentice. In 1884 Babes was appointed associate professor, and the 2nd AnatomoPathological institute was re-established for him in the prosectorship of the Stefánia Poor Children's Hospital, which he directed as prosector. It is an interesting aspect of the history of the Medical Faculty of Budapest, that now nearly all the former teachers of Babes, the student ( József Lenhossék, Jenő Jendrassik, Kálmán Balogh, Gusztáv Scheuthauer, Frigyes Korányi, Vilmos Sçĥųiek, József Fodor, János Bókai and others) became his fellow professors, when he was only thirty. These years are interesting in the history of medicine, and especially of microbiology as well, as this is the period of "the great discoveries" in bacteriology: the bacillus of tubercolosis was discovered by Koch in 1882, that of malleus by Löffler and Schütz in the same year, the causer of Asiatic cholera by Koch in 1883, and in 1884 that of diphteria and typhoid by Löffler and Gaffky respectively [20]. Scheuthauer himself as a professor did not often deal with microscopic tech187
