Antall József szerk.: Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 5. (Budapest, 1972)
Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts (Guide for the Exhibition)
XVI. THE SEMMELWEIS MEMORIAL ROOM The closing room of the exhibition is the Semmelweis memorial room. The interieur evokes the atmosphere of the 1860-ies. The furnishing consists of original furniture, paintings and carpet of Semmelweis preserved by his family and assigned to the museum. The style of the room brings us back to Semmelweis' s age, it is not homogenous, it represents the transitory period. The Biedermeyer and Neo-Baroque furniture are symbols of bourgeois welfare and harmony. Semmelweis's Neo-Baroque desk, on which he perhaps wrote his main work the "Aetiology ", stands under a portrait of Balassa made by Mihály Kovács (1818-1892). The two plain bookcases reveal the Biedermeyer influence of the Steindl-workshop in Pest (Plate XVIII.). The simple, strict execution gives way to the free predominance of the books. It contains some valuable survivals of the Semmelweis library: Cicero , Horace and Virgil's works in a German-Latin series (Fig.82.), Democrite written by Karl Julius Weber , the bound volumes of contemporary obstetrical journals which contain Semmelweis's marginal notes, etc. The angular oblong saloon table is an original piece, too. The rest of the furnishing had been selected to harmonize with the original pieces. (Fig.83.). The portrait of Terezia Müller, the mother of Semmelweis and József Semmelweis, his father, the owner of the grocery store to "The White Elephant" which stood in the House, was painted by an unknown Hungarian painter, probably from Buda. The portrait of Semmelweis as a child at the age of 12 was painted by Lénárd Landau (1790-1868) (Fig.93.). The aquarell portraits of Ignác Semmelweis and his wife Mária Weidenhof er in 1857, the date of their marriage, was made by Ágoston Canzi (1808-1866) the reputed portrait-painter of the age. (Fig.84.). Beside the contemporary photographs of Semmelweis that have come down to us this painting can be considered as the most authentic Semmelweis portrait. There are two more painted photographs exhibited of Semmelweis's wife from a later date and their daughter, Antónia. The interieur is completed with the restored carpet of Semmelweis, a Savonnarie with blue background which covers whole room; the white stove, a contemporary lustre, a silver plate produced in the Buda goldsmith's workshop and the frothy curtains. In the Semmelweis memorial room we take leave of the visitors. "The Saviour of Mothers" started his career in this building - perhaps in this very room and he returned here in his mortal remains. His birthplace and last restingplace became thus a real place of pilgrimage.
