Palla Ákos szerk.: Az Országos Orvostörténeti Könyvtár közleményei 24. (Budapest, 1962)

An unknown autograph of Semmelweis

From cur standpoint Semmelweis' autographs fulfil these requirements. Only about 25-30 are known out of all his literary activity and these are mostly short case-histories and reports in German; not a single one in Hungarian has turned up until a short time ago. The only known autograph of Semmelweis written in Hungarian about another subject is a letter addressad to the Academy on November 27, i860. Semmelweis offers to the library of the Academy his work about his theory and his teaching, written perforce in German. Some western circles seized upon this fact as a forther proof against Semmelweis' Hungarian nationality. Being of German origin, he ignored the Hungarian language and, according to some people, he wrote this letter at dictation. Those who are of this opinion seem to forget that Semmelweis states in his letter quite definitely that in his capacity of assistant doctor in the Gynaecological Institute of Vienna he was, at the time of his discoveri, staying "outside the country's borders". He says further that he had to write his book in German in order to reach the public he wanted to convince. The question of Semmelweis' Hungarian nationality is, as far as we are concerned, entirely settled; every unbiased cultured person and medical-historian cannot but treat it as being above discussion. Howewer, in the last years several publications, chiefly of German and Austrian provenience, started discussions anew and repeatedly tried to deny the Hungarian nationality of Semmelweis. Moreover, all this is happening amidst the approval of the direct descendants of that forum which did not acknowledge Semmelweis' merits at that time. As long as he had to defend his theory, even the request for his qualification as a lecturer at the University was granted him in an ignominious form; later, when he became world-famous, they wanted to adopt him into the German nation and even to-day cannot this claim. This error is a variety of chauvinism well-known in science, still we have to fight against such unbounded greediness. Such an arbitrary concept must be denounced very definitely as we are now in possession of an irrefutable proof which would in itself exclude all overbold racial dreams, even in case we did not dispose of quite a number of evidences.