Claudius F. Mayer: From Plato to Pope Paul / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 17. (Budapest, 1989)

and culture history, allowed him to visit Innsbruck High School. Under the tutorship of Dr. Donath, Mayer dealt with philosophy. The academic language was Latin there, but he could improve his Greek, and begin with Hebrew and Arabic. His friend, Count Ledochowsky gave him lessons in Polish and when he was sent to Emmaųs Monastery in Prague to study Georgian music, he began to learn Czech. In the year of 1919 he returned to Eger and after a long hesitation asked his tutor to let him leave the Order. His new vocation suggested by the abbey was medicine. From 1919 to 1925 he studied at the Faculty of Medicine of Budapest University. Not only he studied medicine, taking part in anatomical and laboratory exercises, but he read the history of medicine as well. He was graduated in 1925 and during the next two years he wrote his comprehensive book on the history of medicine. The book intrigued Kuno Klebelsberg, Minister of Cultural Affairs and he honorated Mayer's knowledge with a scholarship to Leipzig at the institution of Prof. Sudhoff and Prof. Sigerist. Dr. Mayer returned to Hungary in 1929 and with the recommendation of Sigerist he tried to obtain a job at the faculty of medicine as a lecturer of medical history. Somehow he could not succeed in it. ("/ learned later that they had considered me too young though had been satisfied with my knowledge. I had been already exasperated by earlier difficulties so I decided to look for a job abroad.''''

—he wrote in his curriculum vitae.) So Dr. Mayer went over to America with his young wife in 1930. In 1932 he began to work for the Medical Library of the Pentagon. He was the editor of the Index Catalogue of the library, which published abstracts of the most notable medical publications of the world since 1880. In 1948 he was promoted an LTC. His excellent command of so many languages was essential for his job. He could even profit it in solving medical problems: e. g. the identification of a kind of nephrosonephritis haemorrhagica virus which killed plenty of US servicemen in the Korean war, was due to his Russian knowledge. Namely, he had read an article describing similar symptoms of a disease well known in the Russians-Japanese Manjurian war. This way he could identify the plague. First time, when he came back to Hungary for a congress, was the Conference of Emigrant Hungarian Physicians in Budapest. At the same time he won the Weszprémi award of the Hungarian Society for the History of Medicine. In 1985 he was granted a diploma of merit of the Semmelweis University of Medicine for the 60th anniversary of his graduation. The diploma was delivered over by the Hungarian Ambassador to Washington. The Ambassador expressed his opinion that Dr. Mayer's life represents a way of how it is possible to work for one's homeland abroad. In the year when Dr. Mayer celebrated his 90th birthday in Hungary, his "History of Medicine" was re-edited. The new edition was enlarged by a chapter about the contemporary medicine and public health. The edition was helped by the Hungarian Society for the History of Medicine. The present essay has already been published by the E.M. (Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Human Genetics, Paris, 6-11 September, 1971), in a rather shortened form, without notes and bibliography. This volume goes forth with the hope, that a complete version containing all the important data, notes and scholia will help to show Mayer's enormous knowledge in medical history and to promote researches in related studies. 4