Palla Ákos szerk.: Az Országos Orvostörténeti Könyvtár közleményei 12. (Budapest, 1959)

Dr. BENCZE JÓZSEF: A magyar nép mesterséges gyógyfürdőiről, a füstölésről és gőzölésről

gátion is the fact that even a doctor erected a smoke bath in Szombathely in the late 18th centuiry. Imre Szalay spared neither trouble nor pains to travel to Paris and interview a French physician called Gales, famous for his artificial smoke bath. The Hungarian physician dwelt quite a time in Paris to study the application and indications of smoke bath and returned to Szombathely to build a smoke bath on the same lines he had seen in Paris. According to records of the period, his smoke bath advertised in print and in pamphlets acquired such a fame im Hungary and the adjacent territories of Austria, that the sick thronged to the place. Pamphlets ranking among rarefies, described and shown in photostat by the autor, enumerate the wide orange of „inner and auter diseases" for which the municipal physician Imre Szalay recommended his therapy. The author then proceeds to medication by cold water and states that cold water treatment was a long established practice in Hungary, but it was more usual to bath, rob, or wash only some parts of the body, which practice often rooted in some ritual. The miraculous cold water baths in places of pilgrimage are common knowledge. The follows amd description of Priessnitz cures, wide-spread and popular throughout the country to such an extent that Hungarian people are still talking of Prissnitz compresses and cure. An original lettéi* —• with a photostat of the first page included in the paper — written in 1840 by a Hungarian landowner from the Priessnitz Institute in Gräfenberg, describes all the intricacies of the Priessnitz cure and is a clear evidence of how well aware this simple peasant had been of the psychic effect of his therapy. The keen eye of dr. Bittner, a municipal health officer of Arad, who visited Priessnitz at a later date, soom discovered — as put down in a letter — that Priessnitz applied his method mechanically, and dr. Bittner disapproves of his considering his cure as a panacea, which was detrimental to be sure. The author finally states that, in the second half of the past century, hydrotherapy founded on science took control of popular medication but though the thousand varieties of artificial homemade meddcinals baths fell out of fashion they can mot be said to have disappeared without leaving a trace. Most often harmless home-made medicinal baths and vapor fumigation are still in favour though less frequently used, while smoke fumigation survived to this day but in superstitious ceremonies.