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)

group, Ágoston Trefort. Babes's trip took him to Munich (Bollinger, Ziemsen), Heidelberg (Arnold), Strassburg (Reklinghausen, Waldeyer), Berlin (Virchow, Koch) and Paris, where he became the assistant of professor Cornil in the pathological-institute. They wrote the first medical bacteriology together [24]. On returning home he took over the direction of the 2nd pathologico-anatomical institute, re-established especially for him, as we have already seen. At the clinic of Korányi he held regular lectures on bacteriology and collaborated with the colleagues of the latter, Árpád Bókaÿ and Arthur Irsay [25]. He wrote the first book on bacteriology in Hungarian [20] (Fig. 1.), which ranks among the first ones in the world, in addition to the earlier one, written together with Cornil in French. It was 402 pages long, included 24 coloured plates, and was illustrated with his own drawings based on his own preparations. The book was the 52nd volume of the Hungarian Medical Publishing House, founded by Markusovszky, and was written in a good Hungarian style. Based on the systems of Cohn, van Tieghem, Zopf, Rabenhorst, and of de Bary and Hueppe respectively it described and classified the schizomycete, and the diseases caused by them. The excellent bacteriological work did not only reflect how well versed the young scientist was, but it was a worthy testimony of the intense microbiological activity of the Hungarian scientists at the dawn of the era of bacteriology. In addition to his own works Babes's book could already refer to Kálmán Balogh, Árpád Bókaÿ, János Bókaÿ, József Fodor, Endre Högÿes, Frigyes Korányi, József Löte, Aladár Rózsahegyi and the introduction makes special mention of the help received from Ferenc Hutyra in compiling the book. The anatomo-pathological and bacteriological activity of Babes, attaining international repute, soon raised interest in Bucharest, too. He was first asked by the Roumanian Government in 1888 to study a bovine disease called "gastroentero-nephritis", or "infectious haemoglobinaemia", which had been general in Rumania for some years and caused great damage. After some years he was again asked to study a sheep-disease, in Roumanian known as "carceag". All that was described in detail by Ferenc Hutyra in the first edition (1894) of his famous "Internal Medicine" [27]: "The contagious spread of the disease had been noticed earlier, but serious attention was given to it only when Babes in 1888 was commissioned by the Rumanian Government to make a thorough study of it, and he published the results of his investigations. Our knowledge on the disease is restricted essentially to the data released by him, so below we are going to describe the ailment entirely after him." Babes, the prominent pathologist, considered it to be an infectious disease, based on the anatomo-pathological lesions. He indeed found the pathogen in the erythrocytes of the affected animals. True, he still believed the pathogenic protozoon to be a bacterium and named it Haematococcus bovis, but in recognizing the essence of the disease he by all means has priority over Theobald Smith, who made his historic account on Texas fever only a year later, in 1889 [28]. The priority of Babes is recognized by the name "Babesia" given to the protozoons causing piroplasmosis. 189