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)
of Semmelweis''s age and Semmelweis's Instructions written on the prophylaxis of puerperal fever. The third show-case presents a few medical instruments used in Semmelweis's age : instruments for cutting dead embryoes (Somatomes), uterodilators, bougies, forceps and a pelvimeter. Furthermore one can see a forensic medical report by Semmelweis and Lajos Arányi, and the photograph and book of Tivadar Kézmárszky (1841-1902), his successor. On the panel above the show-case the work-places of Semmelweis and photo-copies of his portraits can be seen. The fourth show-case contains the documents and reliquies concerning Semmelweis's death: the bilingual (German-Hungarian), mourning-card and the Hungarian one of his wife, the epitaph in the Schmelz Cemetery, where he first rested, two massive copper plates found fixed to his metal coffin during the exhumation in 1963. Inthe show-case there are three memorial medals (plaques) dedicated to Semmelweis and made by the artists Reményi and Szántó (Fig.67.). The part dedicated to Semmelweis concludes with three quotations which may reveal the essence of his life and work: " Everything was problematic, everything was undecipherable, everything was doubtful, only the great number of the dead was an irrevocable reality". The second reads as follows : "Murder must be stopped and in order to stop it I shall keep guard and he who dares to propagate dangerous doctrines on puerperal fever will find a determined opponent in me." The third qoutation was written by the English Semmelweis Memorial Committee: "The scheme to raise an international Semmelweis memorial is a noble one and we are pleased to support it... What Semmelweis had accomplished does not belong simply to medicine, to his country or to ours, but to the whole world." 5. The Medical School of Pest and the Formation of Special Disciplines The "Medical School of Pest" the chief merit of which was to raise Hungarian medicine to European rank, was not devoid of great names in the last third of the 19th century, either. Its line of development can be said to the unbroken. József Lenhossék (1818-1888) - the second of the three Lenhosséks - was professor of anatomy at the University of Pest. He performed important studies on the medulla oblongata and medulla spinalis, and his anthropological research work on deformed skulls is important, too. The founder of the "Bókay-dynasty", János Bókaÿ senior (1822-1884) was the creator of modern pediatrics at the University of Pest. Jenő Jendrassik (1824-1891) was the first significant representative of physical medicine. He was responsible for the plans of the Physiological Institute of the University which belonged to the most up-to-date institutes of contemporary Europe.
