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

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2 Medical History in Hungary 1972 (Comm. Hist. Artis Med. Suppl. 6.) —although the cannot demonstrate a single minute fact in favour of this premise. *Natural selection

' is just empty words without meaning, in fact it is an impossibility, for it is impossible to conceive of selection without a selector." Even the Orvosi Hetilap (Medical Weekly) carried anti-Darwinist articles in this period. One of these was entitled "Darwin's Theory: or a Critique of the Origin of the Species

—After Professor dr. Fée of Strassbourg". (

Orvosi Hetilap, 1864, p. 569.) Long years had to pass before Darwinism received scientific credence and authority in Hungary. The work of introducing it into fundamental scientific thinking was done by physicians. Tivadar Margó was one of the first Hungarian doctors to propagate and apply scientifically the teachings of Darwin. Margó (1816—1896) was the son of a poor clergyman whose revolutionary thinking influenced the son Tivadar, and the latter's life. Tivadar Margó himself was an army doctor in 1848. After the fall of the revolution, his father was for a while imprisoned by the government of the Habsburgs in their notorious Neugebäude, and after that even the son remained for some time "a man under a cloud", unreliable for the government. For this reason he could not get a chair in the Budapest Medical School, and was already 44 when he was appointed to head the Department of Medical Surgery at the University of Kolozsvár. The speech he made in 1862 in his first lecture of the school-year at Kolozsvár was characteristic of Margó's entire approach. "It is my most ardent wish to present Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in such a way as to form a link of transition between Morphology and Phisiology and to be regarded as a foundation stone for medical science as a whole." Margó was clearly aware that it took men of some philosophical education to engage in science. In his address after he was appointed chancellor of the university, he said: "A lack of philosophical training for the mind renders university studies one-sided, superficial, and at times entirely unsuccessful. The damage wrought by this lack.

.. is the most detrimental

... in the case of students at the departments of natural sciences." "The simple observer can become a scientific researcher or explorer only if he is able to connect the data collected, or the whole series of the phenomena noted into a complete chain with mental links.

.. and in this way he is able among the many different forms and figures, amidst the often unimportant phenomena of change, to get a glimpse of that which is permanent and standard

—to establish the law." The actual penetration of Darwinism into teaching and scientific life in Hungary started with the publication of Margó's Általános Állattan (General Zoology) in 1868. In this and in his university and popular lectures he already took a stand in support of Darwinism. From his Zoology he still omitted the theory of natural selection, but later he propagated the entire Darwinist doctrine with this important part included. Let us present a few excerpts from his writings about Darwin and Darwinism: "It was in the beacon light of the great truth expressed in his theory that we first arrived at the conviction that Nature makes avail not only of bliss and pleasure