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 - G. Buzinkay: Sanitary References in Kelemen Mikes's Letters from Turkey (in English)
of the greatest figures of Hungarian literature [2],—his greatness has, however, been rather an acknowledged than an investigated and elaborated fact to this day. The critical edition of his letters and other works was started only in 1966 [3]. The manuscript of Letters from Turkey had got home on mysterious ways, and its first edition appeared only in 1794, due to István Kultsár (1760-1828), an enthusiastic organizer of Hungarian literary life and stage-craft [4]. At the time of its appearance it could not already play an active role in literary life, it was a piece of "literary history" at the most. Mikes' s spicy, Transylvanian Hungarian which even at the time of its publication was unprecedented in the then fast-changing Hungarian prosaic language with its flexibility and expressivity, could not already influence the language reform movement that had just started then. His wisdom, ripened in the exile, and the strong influence of French spirit on his works could not become wholly integrated in the national programme of the reform age that way slowly under way. Thus one of the most modern writers and the greatest stylist of Hungarian literature could not, even in his own country, occupy a worthy position. His work is a peak of Hungarian culture history that occurs only in exceptional cases : it is a peak indeed, which can be approached on several ways but from which no other path leads on. It is a peak and an ending at the same time: the ending-point of a magnificient. series of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Transylvanian memoirists. The "steps" leading to him were such outstanding figures of Hungarian history and culture history as János Szalárdi (1601—1666), the reigning prince of Transylvania János Kemény (1607-1662), Miklós Tótfalusi Kis (1650-1702), the famous printer who went to Holland and England, chancellor Miklós Bethlen (1642—1716), and the prince himself, Ferenc Rákóczi II. What is more, in an interesting way Mikes was the last in the line of those great Transylvanian memoirists — Mihály Cserei (1667—1765), Péter Apor (1676—1752) and Kata Bethlen (1700—1759) [5]—his contemporaries, who might not even be informed of each other's works, and who guarded the traditions. It was Transylvania, which became independent when the Turkish occupation of 150 years began,. 94 CCe/n^rt i Júi'ĥe¢.
