Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 46-47. (Budapest, 1968)

TANULMÁNYOK - Antall József: A család és az iskola szerepe Semmelweis személyiségének kialakulásában (Német nyelven)

system established in 1851, which remained in existence practically for a hundred years. As it has been seen, at the time of Ignác Semmelweis the grammer school still comprised six forms and between 1820-1835 all the six Semmelweis-boys went to this type of school. Their surnames were always written "Szemmelweisz" in Hungarian fashion and the school-registers (Informationes) gave their nationality (natio) always as "Hungarus", whereas with many of their classmates one can find entries like Austriacus, Croatus, Gallicianus, Hebraeus, etc. (We may mention, that the death of József Semmelweis in 1846 was announced by the family on a mourning-card written in Hungarian, although a considerable part of the population of Buda was then still German in language.) Ignác Semmelweis entered the first grammatical class of the grammar school of Buda in the school-year 1829/30, still before the Piarists took it over, at the age of eleven. In that year he became sixth among the prize pupils, in Hungarian he was first the 5th, later the 8th. It was in the last 4 secular period of the school, when he finished Forms II and III; he still held the 4th-5th position, and in Hungarian he became the 4th, after a brief set-back. In the next year (1832/33) we have no knowledge what school he attended, but by no means the old one. He returned there, now under Piarist control, for the 1st and Und humanistic classes. In the first form (corresponding to the Vth) he again held the 4th-5th position, while in the final year (1834/35) he became the 2nd, challenging the 1st; in Hungarian the 4th among his sixty classmates. The problem of Semmelweis' bad and defective schooling has been a permanent interest with his biographers, as an outcome of some remarks by Schürer von Waldheim. True, the methodology of teaching was not on a high degree and the contemporary schools did not generally give a good basis in the natural •sciences for later studies, in Hungary as well as in many other countries. Ruthless dictating and cramming did not develop good logical abilities in the students. If we nevertheless try to present Semmelweis's schoolings in more favourable colours, this does not due to any pro-Hungarian bias, but because it is a fact, that his school as an educational establishment of the university, was —apart from the turmoil caused by one large-scale student-demonstration

—one of the bests, not to mention the Piarist-era, whose schools educated the best brains of Hungarian public and scientific life. The subject-matter of the instruction, as it can be now reconstructed, does not offer many cues, but since prominent teaching-personalities may make a life-long impression on young people it might be worth while examining who were the teachers of Semmelweis in the grammar school of Buda. In the first grammatical class an excellent teacher Ferenc Lux, who worked in that school for three decades, in the second and third grammatical classes János Majorszky, a Doctor in Philosophy and in Law, a lawyer and a noted geographical and urbanistical specialist, were his teachers. Among the Piarist teachers there was .an outstanding personality, József Palotay-Purgstaller (1st humanistic class). ^He was a Doctor of Philosophy and Theology, an ordinary member of the Hunga-