Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 18-19. (Budapest, 2000)

Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts - Guide to the Exhibition

granate for containing powders and liquids are to be mentioned. Some beautiful mortars on the tare table, balances and other equipments complete the pharmacy interior, which is unique in its kind. XVI. The Semmelweis Memorial Room The last part of the exhibition is the Semmelweis Memorial Room. The interior evokes the atmosphere of the 1860s. The room has been furnished with original pieces, paintings and the rug of Semmelweis, which were all preserved and donated to the Museum by his family. The style of the room brings us back to Scmmclweis's age, it is not homogenous, but represents a transitory period. The Biedcrmcycr and Nco-Baroquc furniture is a symbol of bourgeois welfare and harmony. Semmelwcis's Neo-Baroque desk, on which he perhaps wrote his main work the Aetiology, stands under the portrait of Balassa painted by Mihály Kovács (1818-1892). The two bookcases reveal the Biedcrmcycr style of the Stcindlworkshop in Pest. The simple, strict execution gives way to the predominance of the books. It contains some valuable volumes of the his library: Cicero, Horace and Virgil's works in a German-Latin scries, and an essay about Dcmocritc written by Karl Julius Weber. The bound volumes of contemporary obstetrical journals contains Semmelweis's own notes. Another original piccc is the angular saloon table on the left. The rest of the furniture had been selected to harmonize with the original pieces. The portrait of his mother, Terezia Miiller, and his father, József Semmelweis, was painted by an unknown Hungarian artist, probably from Buda. His father was the owner of the grocery store The White Elephant, which was located in this house. The portrait of the young Semmelweis, at the age of 12, was painted by Lénárd Landau (1790-1868). The aquarelle portraits of Ignác Semmelweis and his wife Mária Weidenhofer in 1857, the year of their wedding, was made by Ágoston Canzi (1808-1866), a reputed portrait-painter of the age. Beside the contemporary photographs of Semmelweis, that have come down to us, this painting may be considered as the most authentic Semmelweis portrait. We have exhibited two more painted photographs about his wife from a later date and their daughter, Antónia. The interior is completed with his preserved rug, a Savonnairc with blue background which covers the whole room; the white stove, a contemporary lustre, a silver plate produced in the Buda goldsmith's workshop and the frothy curtains. In the Semmelweis Memorial Room we say farewell to our visitors. 'The Saviour of Mothers' had started his career in this building where his remains have returned to. The house he was born and where he has been buried thus became a real place of pilgrimage. 81