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)

I. Friedrich: The Spreading of Jenner's Vaccination in Hungary

I. Friedrich : The Spreading of Jenner's Vaccination in Hungary 155 Here we would like to mention the story of an English copy of Jenner's first book, published in 1798. The book followed an interesting course. Jenner sent the dedicated copy to Blumenbach, the famous teacher at Göttingen. (The misprints were corrected in the book by himself.) Later on the book got into the possession of Bene who bought it perhaps at a secondhand auction. After the death of Bene the valuable book went into the possession of the library of the Pest medical faculty, where it is still kept. Endre Högÿes, the excellent Hungarian bacteriologist, wrote about it for the first time on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the invention of vaccination.

4

1 The usefulness of vaccination was propagated by the contemporary papers, too. The paper published in Vienna in Hungarian, Magyar Kurir (Hungarian Courier) gave an account of the first book of Bene which had still propagated variolation and the same article reported that the first public inoculation took place in Pest in August 1801.

4

2 There was another way for exchanging opinions and experiences in writing: correspondence. At the end of the 18th century or even at the beginning of the 1800's correspondence became the main vehicle of communication because of the adverse pressconditions, the watchfully guarding censorship and the political power aiming to direct and oppress cultural life. In the groves of science the situation was the same. "A whole flow of reactionary orders and instructions tried to paralise free thinking and all these were crowned by the actions of cowardy or overzealous censors

. In this atmosphere a medical book might be suppressed even because it mentioned the bad state of the roads in Carinthia.

f>i

3 Due to such restrictions in intellectual life not only in literature but in scientific life as well the exchange of thoughts in private letters became usual. The above mentioned book of Sándor Várađi on small-pox is made more interesting by the letters which the author exchanged with his friends and colleagues on the subject of vaccination. A Transylvanian nobleman, Elek Szentpáli, to whom Várađi dedicated his book from Vienna where he studied, wrote: "Sir, My Dear Friend, Cow-pox has a great deal of popularity here. All well-read and sensible parents did not question the truth of Jenner's invention and the foreign examples. They had their children inoculated by the blessed vaccinia. Their worthy example drew the greatest majority of the community after them. We may hope that within 4

1 Högÿes, Endre: Jenner és a védoltások tana (Jenner and the Doctrine of Vaccination). O. H. 1896. No. 39. p. 466—470. 4- Vita, Zsigmond: Adatok a hazai himlőellenes védőoltás elterjedéséhez (Contributions to the Spreading of Vaccination in Transylvania). Communicationes ex Bibliotheca Históriáé Medicae Hungarica 1962. No. 24. p. 178. 4

3 A magyar irodalom története 1772—1849-ig. Főszerk. Sőtér, István. (History of Hungarian Literature from 1772 to 1849 Ed. by Sőtér, István). Bp. 1965Vol. III. p. 194.