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)
made and presented to him by his disciples. Next to it there is his contemporary photograph and a plaque made by Ferenc Högÿes together with some surgical instruments of the age: accessories for suture, tonsillotome, Petit's raspatory and Leiter's osteotome, etc. 4. Ignác Semmelweis The hard life and world-famous discovery of the greatest Hungarian physician is well-known from his numerous biographies written by both Hungarian and foreign medico-historians. Here we only should life to enumarate the exhibited objects and documents referring to him. We present the copies of the "Land-registers " of the Tabán district kept in the Buda Archives which prove that the Semmelweis family lived in the present building of the museum between 1806-1823. One can see a page of the birth-register of Taban Parish Church with the entry of Ignác Semmelweis 's birth. The poem written by the 7 year old Semmelweis to his grandmother dates from 1825. Mention should be made of the mourning-card of József Semmelweis, the father of Ignác Semmelweis, who died in 1846, because it was published in Hungarian, whereas in Buda, German used to be the more widely spoken language at that time. There is a certificate on show dating from 1847 where Semmelweis states that Markusovszky completed his obstetrical practice successfully. You can see the original marriage-certificate of Semmelweis with Maria Weidenhof er in 1857. Semmelweis' s report on his students goes back to the same date. The contemporary photographs represent Semmelweis in 1861 and his wife in 1863 and there is a photo of his widow with her family. Some of his personal keepsakes that have come down to us are displayed here, too : his brief-case, paper-knife made of walrus-tusk, and a silver box which contained his shirt-buttons. The second show-case presents the documents referring to his scientific activity (Fig. 66.): a copy of the Medical Weekly from January loth, 1858 where his first study on his discovery was published. There is a facsimile copy of his letter written to the Hungarian Academy in i860 on show and his momentous work published in Leipzig in 1861 which he presented to the University Library. One can clearly see his lines of dedication in it. The three "Open Letters" which were prooked and attacked by the European gynaecological circles can be seen, too. Here we should like to refer to the question of Semmelweis's nationality. We exhibited Siebold's work written in German to which Semmelweis made marginal notes in Hungarian. It serves as a psychological proof of the fact that Semmelweis was in fact thinking Hungarian even while reading in German. Above the show-case there are portraits of some famous gynaecologists
