Palla Ákos szerk.: Az Országos Orvostörténeti Könyvtár közleményei 6-7. (Budapest, 1957)

NATTER-NÁD MIKSA: A magyar orvosok és a botanika

SUMMARY Author points out that the fundamentals of botany were laid down mainly by physicians. Hippocrates, the founder of scientific medicine, began the work, Dioskurides, the most outstanding botanist and pharmacologist of the ancient age extendet it and the ,,botanist fathers" living in the 16th century continued it. The first herbaria in Hungarian were written on grounds of these works. For example, the „Herbarium" by Peter Melius, published in 1578, and the ,,Fives könyv" by András Beythe, published in 1595. The documents and the Latin-Hungarian vocabularies originating from earlier centuries contain data showing that the libraries in monasteries, but first of all the library of King Mathias Corvinus, one of the five most famous and richest libraries of the 15th century may have had in their possession many medico-botanical works, which, however, were lost later. From the 16th century on the physicians of Hungary took an active part in the learning and development of botany. György Purkircher and Károly Rayger, Pozsony physicians, collected and described rarer plants, of which they grew many in their own gardens. Keresztély Augustini ab Hortis, a physician of Késmárk, the inventor of the Carpathian or Hungarian Balm was a famous botanist in the early 17th century. János György Krámer (or by his former family name: Brassay), a military surgeon, author of the „Tentamen botanicum", who had called attention lo the spontaneous occurrence of lilacs (Syringa) in the area of the Lower Danube, as well as Károly Frigyes Loew, a physician of Sopron, who described the plants of his homeland and wrote the first detailed plant-enumeration in Hungarian entitled „Flora semproniensis"', were outstanding figures in botany in this contry: József Csapó, a physician of Debrecen, published his medico-botanical work entitled ,,Űj füves és virágos magyar kert" in 1775. István Mátyus, who had won his doctor's degree in Utrecht, wrote a work of six volumes: „Ö és új diaetetica", the first work written in Hungarian on produce and crops, in which the materials and methods required for the maintenance of health are discussed over 3412 pages. Pál Kitaibel, the most prominent figure in Hungarian botany, began his carrier by the side of Józset Winter], professor of chemistry and botany at the Nagyszombat, then at the Buda and later at the Pest university. János Ádám Rayman, physicist of the county of Sáros and of the town of Eperjes, who had tried