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)
V. R. Harkó — T. Vida: British Contacts of I. Weszprémi. 121 useful books for their alma mater from foreign lands. They even managed to smuggle in some books which otherwise the strict censorship would never have permitted into the country. The library, which survived a lot of tempests, had by that time two thousand volumes, ten per cent of them English works. Although most of the 85 volumes mentioned figure as Liber Ángliçus, without further title, in the catalogue, some can be identified. It can be established, for instance, that the collection included several English dictionaries, grammars (e.g. György Komáromi Csipkés's Angiiçųm Specilegium published in Debrecen in 1664) encyclopaedias and biographies, and Felvinczi's Hungarian translation of the Sçĥola Salernitana published by Thomas Paynell. An examination of the British-related material in a catalogue dating from thirty years later indicates that the material was growing richer, and the predominantly theological works were joined by contributions from well-known authors in other disciplines, thus writings by Bacon, Boyle, Blount; Walter Harris (1647—1732), the physician, Richard Lower (1631—91), Richard Morton (1637—1698), William Harvey (1578—1658), a herbarium and a pharmacopoeia published in London, a number of natural science works, not to speak of historical, legal, literary and classical authors. The numerical increase in English books was also significant. Unfortunately, the catalogue compiled in 1750, while Weszprémi was librarian, 3 got lost in 1944, although it already included a description of György Maróthy's valuable collection consisting of 241 valuable volumes, which had some interesting material of British references. Marótĥÿ knew English well and, in his draft curriculum proposed in 1741, suggested already the introduction of instruction in English as well as fostering German and French knowledge. Prior to this, he had presented an English —Latin dictionary to the College Library, in order to facilitate language study. There is good reason to suppose that during his years in Debrecen Weszprémi acquired a rudimentary knowledge of English, French and German besides a sound knowledge of Latin; this is indicated by his translations. During his work as a librarian he was thus able to become acquainted with all the works in his custody which interested him. Hatvani, as his faculty advisor, probably also helped to orient him in the direction of the natural sciences, and so it was little wonder that he wrote in his Diary about the years in Debrecen that they encouraged him to turn to the medical sciences. 3 Harkó, Viola R.: A debreceni ref. Kollégium angol könyvanyaga és annak kialakulása . (English-language works in the Calvinist College of Debrecen and the Development of the Collection.) Ph.D. dissertation. Debrecen, 1948, p. 47.
