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)

M. Vida: State-Models (Utopias) and Sociology of Medicine

26 Medical History in Hungary 1972 (Comm. Hist. Artis Med. Suppl. 6.) 17th century his foresunner Grotius

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2 and Puffendorf, the first representatives of natural law, regarded natural condition as the only suitable base for the realization of a communistic way of life. According to Vairasse nature created human beings to be equal, therefore society should be built up to preserve the original equality of human beings. This idea became the general base of enlightenment and the rationalist communism of the 18th century. In moral respect, human being is not a "tabula rasa", that is, potentially good and bad tendencies are hidden in him, by nature. Through his concept Vairasse concluded that for preserving communistic society, education has a determinative role. "By nature

—he wrote

—man has a great tendency to faults, provided they are not improved by just, laws, by good examples and education, these bad tendencies increase ani strengĥten, furthermore they suppress the seeds of virtue, planted into man by nature,"

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3 On the contrary, good education may often improve man and could develop good qualities. The primary importance of education as the base of an ideal society was brought up firstly in the French Utopian state-novel. The same principle appeared later in the ideology of the Utopian socialists and the ideology of enlightenment. As education came into the limelight, sociology fell into background in the fields of public health and medicine, and they came forward only in the frame of education or rather in the line of teaching. The state of Severarnb, with the leadership of Sevarias, the wise law-maker, whose personal wisdom creates society itself, by and large, is a despotic monarchy based on democratic principles. This state differs from More's Utopia, it has history for its origin and development, because Vairasse's idea is influenced by the philosophy and legal theory of his age.

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4 Moreover in the forword of his novel he declares that he did not want to write a fantastic story, but he described an existing society in Australia. It was not merely an authors trick rather his faith in the realization of a desired state. With the novel of Vairasse a realistic tendency started in the literary form of Utopia, that, ideologists not only thought dreamily of more idealistic state, but fanatically believed in the realization of their imagination. Instead of having patriarchal families icluding about 1 000 inhabitants, social education becomes general, family education coming to an end. The virtue of Utopian socialistic pedagogy is the involvement of manual work, which leads to healthy and natural view of life. At the first stage of teaching (from the age of 7—until the age of 14) manual work goes on, later the most talent had been granted an exemption of it for the sake of mental work. In honour of capability and the issue of making possible to develop completely intellectual power Vairasse differed from the Utopian socialists, who pronounced intellectual equality of mankind.

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5 Sciences and arts do not occupy the same 4

2 Grotius (his main work): De iure belli et pacis. 1625. 4

3 Vairasse, D. : Histoire des Sevarambes. Paris, Bruxelles, 1681. 4

4 Pataki op. cit. 43 p. 4

5 Pataki op. cit. 46-52 pp.