Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 18-19. (Budapest, 2000)
Semmelweis's Birthplace - the Home of the Museum
petition of 9th May he even accepted the restriction not to use cadavers and to demonstrate only on phantoms 'until the cadaver-question would completely settled'. His friends persuaded him to deliver a lecture for the distinguished Medical Society of Vienna on May 15th 1850, which was chaired by Professor Rokitansky. It was followed by two discussions in consecutive meetings. His ideas were objected and triumphed in the last months of his stay in Vienna. Eventually, his appointment as private Dozent arrived on October 10th 1850 'with the restriction that my practical demonstrations could only be done on phantoms .' In the same month he suddenly left Vienna and returned to Pest. His disillusions are not considered by many to be serious enough to drive him away from Vienna. We learn from a letter he wrote to Markusovszky that in the meantime he had visited Pest. His colleagues, the members of the emerging 'School of Pest', Balassa and Markusovszky, too might have urged him to return home. Though he settled in Budapest again, he found later, however, that the situation was not much better there either. His friends, the most eminent representatives of the Pest Medical School had fought for the rebirth of a new, civic Hungary and served during the revolution as military surgeons. A hard time came upon them after August 1849, the surrender at Világos. The Balassa-circlc was to substitute for the lack of social organizations and scientific institutions abolished or oppressed by Austrian neo-absolutism. The lack of medical literature came to be more and more awkward because the Orvosi Tár (Medical Magazine) ceased to exist in 1849. At last the Orvosi Hetilap (Medical Weekly) came out in 1857 edited by Markusovszky. It was the forum of the School of Pest, the papers of Balassa were published there and the article of Semmelweis was first published in it. Balassa was a man of public life, the head of the society, but the real organizer of Hungarian medical life and also of medical publications was Markusovszky. In 1863 Markusovszky founded the Hungarian Medical Publishing Society, and at the same time, as private physician to the Baron Eötvös and Trcfort families he established important political connections. In the period of the dual monarchy from 1867 medical life was characterized by busy public atmosphere but also by clique isolation. This period tried to transform the country to a modern European power, and in the reform plans for the administration of higher education and public health, Semmelweis also had an active part. The state of affairs were, however, rather miserable. In the Medical Faculty there were five small rooms for parturients. The windows of the St. Rochus Hospital looked onto the dissecting room. The head of the hospital was at the same time professor of midwifery, surgery and pathology. Birly, the professor of midwifery tried to fight against puerperal fever by giving the patients purgatives. Under the pressure of circumstances Semmelweis received an appointment as unsalaried honorary head of the maternity ward of the St. Rochus Hospital. In six years time he achieved that only 0.85% of his patients died from puerperal fever. Professor Birly died in 1855 and Semmelweis was appointed Professor of Theoretical and Practical Obstetrics at the University of Pest. This appointment meant not only a chair at the university but a complete recognition of his activities which he could not have 22
