J. Antall szerk.: Medical history in Hungary 1972. Presented to the XXIII. International Congress of the History of Medicine / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 6. (Budapest, 1972)
V. R. Harkó and T. Vida : British Contacts of the Hungarian István Weszprémi, M. D. (1723—1799)
BRITISH CONTACTS OF THE HUNGARIAN ISTVÁN WESZPRÉMI, M. D* (1 7 23 — 1 7 99) by VIOLA R. HARKÓ and TIVADAR VIÐA wrhen István Weszprémi was born, Hungary had already been liberated w from the Turkish rule which had oppressed her for over one-hundred and fifty years, but the Austrian "aid" to get rid of the Turks demanded additional sacrifices from the long-suffering Hungarian people, finding themselves oppressed once again. Even the foreign traveller caught this mood, as, for instance, Lady Mary Montagu, who made a journey through Hungary in the company of her husband, the British Minister to Constantinople and had been very much afraid of the trip because it had been intimated to her that dangerous frost-bites, barbarous attacks by highwaymen, and a desert of snow, with nowhere a house or human being in sight, awaited those bold enough to cross the country. Although none of this happened, she regretfully mentioned in a letter sent home 1 that there was nothing sadder in the world than travelling in Hungary, especially in view of the fact that the country had once been flourishing, and now there was hardly a man to be seen over vast areas. In the decades following the Peace of Sza már, the sheer biological strength of the nation nonetheless saved the country from destruction and the more animated spiritual atmosphere of the Enlightenment made its beneficial effects felt in Hungary, too. The population doubled through immigration, there were more people to till the land, and although the country was reawakening, she was still decades behind general European intellectual and economic development. Nevertheless, some great personalities emerged —clergymen, physicians, naturalists, and printers —many of them polyhistors with a definite ambition to give new momentum to Hungarian intellectual life. One of these outstanding personalities of the times was István (Csanádi) Weszprémi, a physician, with whose British contacts we wish to deal in this paper. WESZPRÉMFS YOUTH AND SCHOOLING Weszprémi came from a Presbyterian family of bourgeois stock; his family name was actually Csanádi. His parents devoted a great deal of attention to his education, and sent him at the age of nine to study at the Presbyterian boarding school of Pápa, which he attended for three years. He continued his studies 1 Letters of the Lady M-y W-y, written during her Travels. Paris, 1799, Letters XXI and XXIII.
